Miscellaneous tracts relating to natural history, husbandry, and physick / Translated from the Latin [of the 'Amoenitates academicae' of C. Linnaeus], with notes by Benj. Stillingfleet.

Date:: 1759

Credit: Miscellaneous tracts relating to natural history, husbandry, and physick / Translated from the Latin [of the 'Amoenitates academicae' of C. Linnaeus], with notes by Benj. Stillingfleet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$( 5° ) a generation wither and fail, nay a change in the whole flower enfues. We muft however obferve, that in the vegetable kingdom one, and the fame flower does not always contain the organs of generation of both fexes, but oftentimes the male organs are on one plant, and the female on an¬ other. But that the bufinefs of impregnation may go on fuccefsfully, and that no plant may be de¬ prived of the neceflfary duff, the whole moft ele¬ gant apparatus of the anthers and ftigmata in every flower is contrived with wonderful wif- dom. For in mofl: flowers the flamina furround the piftills, and are of about the fame height *, but there are many plants, in which the piftill is longer than the flamina, and in thefe it is wonder- full to oblerve, that the Creator has made the flowers recline, in order that the duft may more eafily fall into the fligma. e. g. in the campa¬ nula, pximrofe, &c. But when the foecundation is compleated the flowers rife again, that the ripe \ , feeds may not fall out before they are difperfed by the winds. In other flowers on the contrary the piftill is fliorter, and there the flowers preferve an ere& fltuation, nay when the flowering comes on they become ere£t; tho’ before they were drooping, or immerfed under water. Laftly, whenever the male flowers are placed below the female ones, the leaves are exceedingly final], and$