cup, and the degree of connection
between the petals. Thus a rose folds them over one another, in the bud; a
convolvulus twists them,--the one expanding into a flat cinquefoil of
separate petals, and the other into a deep-welled cinquefoil of connected
ones.

I find an excellent illustration in Veronica Polita, one of the most
perfectly graceful of field plants because of the light alternate flower
stalks, each with its leaf at the base; the flower itself a quatrefoil, of
which the largest and least petals are uppermost. Pull one off its calyx
(draw, if you can, the outline of the striped blue upper petal with the
jagged edge of pale gold below), and then examine the relative shapes of
the lateral, and least upper {76} petal. Their under surface is very
curious, as if covered with white paint; the blue stripes above, in the
direction of their growth, deepening the more delicate colour with
exquisite insistence.

A lilac blossom will give you a pretty example of the expansion of the
petals of a quatrefoil above the edge of the cup or tube; but I must get
back to our poppy at present.

15. What outline its petals really have, however, is little shown in their
crumpled fluttering; but that very crumpling arises from a fine floral
character which we do not enough value in them. We usually think of the
poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the most transparent and delicate of
all the blossoms of the field. The rest--nearly all of them--depend on the
_texture_ of their surfaces for colour. But the poppy is painted _glass_;
it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Wherever it
is seen--against the light or with the light--always, it is a flame, and
warms the wind like a blown ruby.

In these two qualities, the accurately balanced form, and the perfectly
infused colour of the petals, you have, as I said, the central being of the
flower. All the other parts of it are necessary, but we must follow them
out in order.

16. Looking down into the cup, you see the green boss divided by a black
star,--of six rays only,--and surrounded by a few black spots. My
rough-nurtured poppy contents itself with these for its centre; a rich one
would have had the green boss divided by a dozen of rays, and surrounded by
a dark crowd of crested threads. {77}

This green boss is called by botanists the pistil, which word consists of
the two first syllables of the Latin pistillum, otherwise more familiarly
Englished into 'pes