Daily American organ. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1856, 1855-01-23
Smithsonian Lectures.
REPORTED ron INK AMERICAN ORGAN.
THE FLoWER AND FRuIT.

THE FLOWER AND FRUIT.
By PRoT. Asa GREY, OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY.
All the organs of the flower and fruit are in some
way subservient to the production or the protec-
ton Of the seed. The relation between the bios
som and the vegetation was first considered. AS
branches are evolved from buds, SO are blossoms
and leafbuds and hower-buds are often much alike,
at least in their earlier stages. Sometimes flow
er-buds are transformed into leafbuds The pc
tails, &C., are Familiarity called (" the leaves of the
blossoms !" thus recognising an analogy between
them and ordinary leaves, and, consequently, be-
tween the whole flower and branch.
In confirmation of this 1t was next noticed that
flowers accord with branches in their position
flower-buds always arising from the same points
that leafbuds do, viz from the axis Of the leaves,
giving origin to two modes OF arrangement of
flowers in clusters. A. simple law, answering to
that which fixes the position of the leaves and
branches in vegetation, also fixes the position of
every blossom, assigns to each cluster Its shape
and character, and indicates the precise order in
which the blossoms are to expand.
The parts of the flower were then illustrated
the two sets of coverings or leaves, viz the ca
lyx and the corolla within these, two kinds Of es
sential organs, viz the stamens and the pistis.
The structure Of these organs was explained,
and not only the petals but the stamens and the
pistils shown to be notifications Of leaves; the
whole flower, therefore, sort of branch with
very short axis The gradual and complete trans
ition of leaves of the cayx into petals and Of PEE
tails into stamens was shown in the blossom of the
water-ly. Mexican sages and the SNOWY poinset-
tiathe latter now blooming in our conservato-
rics-were referred to as instances of common foil
age, lin these Of the deepest and brightest scarlet
rivallng the most brilliant corolla in color.
In illustration of the doctrine that all the parts
of the flower answer to leaves on the branch, the
various and widely different forms which the leaf
assumes in vegetation were passed in review, show
ing that when any special Office is to be fulfilled in
the plant nature does not create new organ
for the peculiar duty, but adopts the common or
gan Of vegetation, the Leaf and adapts to the Office
It is to subserve. Thus they are leaves, the first
leaves of the plant, which in the seed are often
charged with nourishing matter, to supply the
pantlet with the means of its earliest growth in
another shape they form the tendrils of the pea
and the gourd in another shape they become the
budscales, which in most trees and shrubs closely
enwrap and protect the tender tips Of the shoots
in winter.
SO in the blossom, they are leaves adapted ITO
still other conditions, which compose theenvelopes
Of the flower; or, more TRANSPORTED still, appear
as the stamens, in which what would have been
cells, containing the green matter of foliage, are
transformed into the yellow fertilizing powder,
called pollen while other leaves folded inward
y, and their edges united, form pstils the united
margins Of the transformed leaf bearing ovules
these being bodies which, after fertilization by the
pollen applied to the stigma, have embryo form
cd Within and thus become seeds. Not that a
stamen or pist was first formed as ordinary
leaf and then transformed into peculiar organ.
The change takes place at very early PERIOD
when all the parts of the forming bud are nearly
similar, but what answer to a leaf and might have
developed as an actual leaf, having its destiny
changed, takes on different mode of develop
ment and becomes stamen or pisti as the case
may be.
A parallel case was mentioned in Zoology. The
comparative anatomist recognises the arm of man
in the fore arm of the monkey the fore leg Of the
cat dog OK &C., modified in the details to suit the
peculiar conditions of each particular animal, and
recognises it no less in the fore limb of the bat,
where it serves the purpose of wing; in the true
wing of birds, in the Unlike arm of whales and
dolphins and in the pectoral fin of the fish. These
all honaotOgous parts; so are all the organs of
the flower; and, having no one general name to en-
brace them all the leaf being the earliest and the
most universal FORM is naturally taken as the type
and all the Others are regarded as notifications of
this.
The lecturer then considered the symemtry Of the
flower, and the prevalence of the numbers and
5-either the one or the other Of these numbers
usually running through the whole blossom-and
stated that the foundation for this was to be found
in the arrangement of the leaves on the STEM
which was fixed in each species by precise math-
ematical law. He then touched upon the disguisal
of this symmetry in many blossoms by the union of
various contiguous parts, and upon devations from
symmetry through the abortion or suppression Of
certain parts This illustrated by referring to
cases where parts which exist in the flower are
suppressed in the fruits; as in the fruit of the
beech and the acorn, where only one seed is found
at maturity, though there are always six rudiment
AIRY seeds in each pistil. Only one Of them grows
and rpens; the other FIVE abortive suppressed
with perfect regularity Several grades of reduced
smplifed forms of the flower were then exhibited
closing with the blossoms of the pine and spruce as
the most simple Of true flowers; one kind of their
flowers consisting of single stamen alone; the
other of pist alone, and this pisti being fat
scale or open reduced leaf bearing apair of ovules
seeds on its inner face, directly exposed to the
air, and to the pollen from the stamens, which acts
upon II directly.
The action Of the pollen, and the formation of
the embryo was then briefly adverted to. As the
embryo is formed, the ovule becomes a seed and
the pstil, with whatever may be connected with It,
becomes the fruit The principal notifications of
the fruit were then illustrated, beginning with the
simple pod, nut, or berry, or stone fruit such as
the cherry and peach, and passing to the more
complex fruits, such as raspberries, Strawberries,
tracing their analoges with the fruits of the rose,
ounce, apple, &c. and closing with illustrations of
fruits, which result from the union of great many
flowers in one mass such as those Of the mulber-
ry, pine apple, bread fruit the fig, &c.
Profits of Hens.
We copy from the New England Farmer the fol-
lowing financial account, kept by gentleman in