Sometimes little bulb-like structures grow in the axils of ordinary leaves, for example, in the tiger lily; these drop off when they are ripe, and can grow into whole new plants. They are really half-way between bulbs and true buds.
CHAPTER XV.
FLOWERS
If you have ever noticed a pea-flower fading, you will have seen that from its heart there grows a little green pea pod which ripens till there are full-grown peas in it (see fig. 80); and a yellow dandelion flower turns in the end to a white puff ball which scatters a hundred floating fruits. In fact, almost all flowers which have not been spoiled by the gardeners and “over-cultivated” leave in their place when they die fruits and seeds in some form or other. This gives us the key to the secret of the structure of the flowers themselves. They are the forerunners of the fruits, containing living seed, and their structure and all their parts are adapted in some way to help in the formation of fruit. Now let us examine the flowers, never forgetting that fact.
Fig. 69. Flower of Harebell; (s) sepals; (p) petals.
Let us choose, for example, a harebell. On the outside we find five separate green parts, and if we examine a bud which has not yet opened we shall find that these fold quite tightly over the inner portions of the flower and protect them, as they do in the rose and in almost all flowers (see fig. 69). In this they correspond to some extent to the bud scales, and their special work is that of protection. In all harebells and roses there are five of these parts, but in the wallflower you will find only four, and in poppies two, and so on. There are different numbers of them in the different kinds of flowers. They are also of different shapes and sizes; sometimes each of the five parts is free, and sometimes they are all joined up together to form a true cup, as in the primrose (see fig. 72). These outer green protective parts have a special name, and are called the calyx or cup, while each of the separate parts which makes the cup is called a sepal.
