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by which the Daisy is fertilized. In the centre of each little flower is
the style surrounded closely by the anthers. The end of the style is
divided, but, as long as it remains below among the anthers, the two
lips are closed. The anthers are covered, more or less, with pollen; the
style has its outside surface bristling with stiff hairs. In this
condition it would be impossible for the pollen to reach the interior
(stigmatic) surfaces of the divided style, but the style rises, and as
it rises it brushes off the pollen from the anthers around it. Its lips
are closed till it has risen well above the whole flower, and left the
anthers below; then it opens, showing its broad stigmatic surface to
receive pollen from other flowers, and distribute the pollen it has
brushed off, not to itself (which it could not do), but to other flowers
around it. By this provision no flower fertilizes itself, and those of
you who are acquainted with Darwin's writings will know how necessary
this provision may be in perpetuating flowers. The Daisy not only
produces double flowers, but also the curious proliferous flower called
Hen and Chickens, or Childing Daisies, or Jackanapes on Horseback. These
are botanically very interesting flowers, and though I, on another
occasion, drew your attention to the peculiarity, I cannot pass it over
in a paper specially devoted to the Daisy. The botanical interest is
this: It is a well-known fact in botany, that all the parts of a
plant--root, stem, flowers and their parts, thorns, fruits, and even the
seeds, are only different forms of leaves, and are all interchangeable,
and the Hen and Chickens Daisy is a good proof of it. Underneath the
flowerhead of the Daisy is a green cushion, composed of bracts; in the
Hen and Chickens Daisy some of these bracts assume the form of flowers,
and are the chickens. If the plant is neglected, or does not like its
soil, the chickens again become bracts.
The only other point in the botany of the Daisy that occurs to me is its
geographical range. The old books are not far wrong when they say "it
groweth everywhere." It does not, however, grow in the Tropics. In
Europe it is everywhere, from Iceland to the extreme south, though not
abundant in the south-easterly parts. It is found in North America very
sparingly, and not at all in the United States. It is also by no means
fastidious in its choice of position--by the river-side or on the
mountain-top it seems equally at h
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