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The dichlamydeous group is subdivided into three, Thalamiflorae, Calyciflorae and Corolliflorae, depending on the position and union of the petals. The subdivision is as follows: Of the Polypetalae, series 1, Thalamiflorae, is characterized by hypogynous petals and stamens, and contains 34 orders distributed in 6 larger groups or cohorts.
"It's so difficult to remember all those long, hard botanical terms," Patty complained afterwards to Jean. "I love the flowers, and I like to paint them and learn their English names, but I don't care in the least if their stamens are hypogynous or their cotyledons induplicate! I think it spoils them to pull them to pieces. They look so much prettier just as they're growing!"
It is useful to be able to classify a flower and to know that the buttercup belongs to the Family Ranunculaceae, with petals free and definite, stamens hypogynous and indefinite, pistil apocarpous. But it is far sweeter to learn about the life of the little plant, to understand why its peculiar flower is useful to it, and how it feeds itself, and makes its seed.
Most flowers have the fruit case in the middle, or it may be the flower is on the top of the pericarp as in pomegranate, apple, pear, plum, and myrtle ... for these have their seeds below the flower.... In some cases again the flower is on top of the seeds themselves as in ... all thistle-like plants'. Thus Theophrastus has succeeded in distinguishing between the hypogynous, perigynous, and epigynous types of flower, and has almost come to regard its relation to the fruit as the essential floral element.
Advance has been along two lines, markedly in relation to insect-pollination, one of which has culminated in the hypogynous epipetalous bicarpellate forms with dorsiventral often large and loosely arranged flowers such as occur in Scrophulariaceae, and the other in the epigynous bicarpellate small-flowered families of which the Compositae represent the most elaborate type.
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