Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/305

 Rh the corolla there has really a tube, closely embracing the Germen. in Adoxa, t. 453, the calyx is half-inferior, the corolla superior. When in botanical language we say germen superior, it is equivalent to flower inferior; but it is sometimes more convenient and proper, for the sake of analogy or uniformity, to use one mode of expression than the other.

Pistils are sometimes obliterated, though oftener changed to petals, in double flowers, as well as the stamens; but I have met with a much more remarkable change in the Double Cherry, of the pistil into a real leaf, exactly conformable to the proper leaves of the tree, only smaller. By this we may trace a sort of round in the vegetable constitution. Beginning at the herbage or leaves, we proceed insensibly to bracteas in many species of Salvia, or to both calyx and corolla in the Garden Tulip, which frequently has a leaf half green half coloured, either in the flower or on the stalk just below it. Anemone alpina produces occasionally a petal among the segments of its involucrum or bractea.