1178. The flower-vesicle is according to its essence a threefold vesicle. In it the leaf-system or the air-plant has been represented, but in like manner and of necessity also the earth-and water-plant, or the vesicles in which stalk and root have been taken up into the kingdom of light. Thus there is the leaf-, stalk-, and root-flower.
1179. The leaf-flower is in the periphery, the stalk- and root-flower in the centre of the vesicle. For the former is the metatype or copy of the leaves, the latter of the stalk and the root.
1180. The leaf-flower is the highest and the very first to be developed. It is that, which chiefly corresponds to light; the trunk-flower is, however, the lowest, the last developed, because it is only the trunk that has been prolonged with difficulty to form a flower. It is the child of the heat and gravity.
1181. It may be also said that the leaf-flower is the electrical, the stem-flower, however, the chemical. In the latter the chemical process must still act visibly, it must still be produced mucus; in the former, however, this must disappear and resolve itself into purely electrical bodies.
1182. The flower consists of three leaf-buds. The leaf-bud is the corolla or blossom. The stalk-bud the pistil. The root-bud the seed.
1183. The corolla is the external whorl of leaves, is first developed, has the form of a leaf, is a vesicle, secretes in itself electrical, inflammable bodies, and is directed towards the sun.
1184. The difference between corolla and pistil is that of the two principal tissues, the tracheal and cellular tissue. By the light the tracheal fasciculi become finally separated from the cellular substance, evolved to a higher degree as the child or product of light, and planted outwardly. The corolla is the tracheal circle, which has forcibly gained its freedom.
1185. The pistil is the vascular substance that has become freely evolved, yet to the highest stage; in a similar relation likewise does the seed stand to the cellular substance. In the fruit therefore the flower again reverts to the primary condition of the plant.
1186. The flower and pistil are therefore those very organs which have been most antagonized in the plant. They are in the highest state of polar tension, and stand opposite each other like electrism and chemism, or as light and matter. This antagonism in the Organic is called sex.
1. FLORAL ENVELOPES.