Bloom Or Blossom, is the popular name for the flowers of fruit-bearing plants.

"The organs of fructification are absolutely necessary, and are always producible by garden plants properly cultivated. They may be deficient in leaves, or stem3, or roots, because other organs may supply their places; but plants are never incapable of bearing flowers and seeds, for without these they can never fully attain the object of their creation, the increase of their species.

"Every flower is composed of one or more of the following parts, viz.: the calyx, which is usually green and enveloping the flower whilst in the bud; the corolla, or petals, leaves so beautifully coloured, and so delicate in most flowers; the stamens or male portion of the flower, secreting the pollen or impregnating powder; the pistils or female portion, irnpregnatable by the pollen, and rendering fertile the seeds; and lastly, the pericarp or seed-vessel.

"The stamens are the only portion of a flower which can be removed without preventing the formation of fertile seed, and their loss must be supplied by the induction to the pistils of pollen from some kindred flower.

"The calyx is not useless so soon as it ceases to envelope and protect the flower, for the flower stalk continues increasing in size until the seed is perfected, but ceases to do so in those plants whose calyces remain long green if these be removed; on the other hand, in the poppy and other (lowers, from which the calyx falls early, the flower stalk does not subsequently enlarge.

"The corolla or petals, with all their varied tints and perfumes, have more important offices to perform than thus to delight the senses of mankind. Those bright colours and their perfumed honey serve to attract insects, which are the chief and often essential assistants of impregnation; and those petals, as observed by Linnaeus, serve as wings, giving a motion assisting to effect the same important process. But they have a still more essential office, for although they are absent from some plants, yet if removed from those possessing them before impregnation is completed, the fertilization never takes place. They therefore perform in such cases an essential part in the vegetable economy; and that they do so is testified by all the phenomena they exhibit. They turn to the sun open only when he has a certain degree of power, and close at the setting of that luminary; their secretions are usually more odorous, more saccharine, and totally differing from those of the other organs of plants; and in the absence of light those secretions are not formed.

"The corolla is not always shortlived, for although in some, as the cistus, the petals which open with the rising sun strew the border as it departs, so some, far from being ephemeral, continue until the fruit is perfected. The duration of the petals, however, is intimately connected with the impregnation of the seed, for in most flowers they fade soon after this is completed; and double flowers, in which it occurs not at all, are always longer enduring than single flowers of the same species. Then, again, in some flowers, they become green and perform the function of leaves after impregnation has been effected. A familiar example occurs in the Christmas rose, (Helleborus niger,) the petals of which are white, but which become green so soon as the seeds have somewhat increased in size, and the stamens and other organs connected with fertility have fallen off.

"It is quite true that some fruit will not ripen if the part of the branch beyond is denuded of leaves, but this only shows that those fruits cannot advance when deprived of leaves as well as of calyx and corolla, the only organs for elaborating the sap; and there are some flowers, as the Daphne mezereon, Autumn crocus, and sloe, that have their flowers perfected and passed away before the leaves have even appeared.

"That the petals perform an important part in elaborating the sap supplied to the fruit is further proved by the flower being unable to bloom or to be fertile in an atmosphere deprived of its oxygen; and by their absorbing more of that gas, and evolving more carbonic acid, than even a larger surface of leaves of the same plant.

"No seed ever attains the power of germinating, unless the pollen from the stamens in the same, or some nearly allied flower, has reached and impregnated its pistils." - Johnson's Princ. of Gard.