First book of Indian botany / Daniel Oliver.

  • Daniel Oliver
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First book of Indian botany / Daniel Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/464 page 9
    to the stamen, so we must carefully examine them under a microscope. Fig. 5 shows them highly magnified. We find that they are distinct globular cells, with minutely granular contents. The fine powder is the pollen, and each of its globular cells is a pollen-grain. Remove all the stamens, noting that they are, like the leaves of the corolla and calyx, inserted directly upon the floral receptacle, and immediately underneath the central organ of the flower. Such being the case, they are techni- cally described as hypogynous. 8. You have now left in the centre of the flower, slightly raised upon a thickened cushion or ring, called the disk, the germ of the future fruit. If the lower part be cut across, you find it to be divided into a number of small cavities, radiating from the centre, each cavity containing the minute rudiments of future seeds. If you take the pains to count the number of cavities (you will probably find them about ten; they vary from seven to fifteen), you will ascertain the number of leaves which are united to form this central organ of the flower, which we shall speak of as the pistil. But how am I to convince you that the pistil is really composed of united leaves ? It would not be easy to make this clear without reference to some other flower in which the pistil is of much simpler struc- ture than in the orange-flower, so that I must ask you to lay it aside for a short interval while we examine the pistil of some pea- flower. Take the flower of the common Field or Garden-pea itself, or of a Scarlet-runner or Haricot, of Lablab, Chick-pea, Sunn-hemp, or Indigo. Any of them will serve, and one or another Fig. 6. A longi- tudinal section of the Pistil of Orange, show- ing the interior of the ovary, with ovules, and style thick- ened upwards into the stigma.
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