ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the differently formed flowers normally produced by certain kinds of plants, either on the same stock or on distinct stocks, ought to have been treated by a professed botanist, to which distinction the author can lay no claim. As far as the sexual relations of flowers are concerned, Linnaeus long ago divided them into hermaphrodite, monoecious, dioecious, and polygamous species. The hermaphrodite class contains two interesting sub groups, namely, heterostyled and cleistogamic plants; but there are several other less important subdivisions, presently to be given, in which flowers differing in various ways from one another are produced by the same species. Some plants have been supposed to be heterostyled merely from their pistils and stamens varying greatly in length, and he has been himself more than once thus deceived.
