The female flowers are equally simple, consisting of a bract, from whose axil arises usually a very short stalk, surmounted by two carpels adherent one to the other for their whole length, except that the upper ends of the styles are separated into two stigmas.
The bract is not, however, the one from which the axis terminating in the flower arises, but is a bract produced upon it, and gives origin in its axil to a new axis, the basal portion FIG.
The flower with its pale is sessile, and is placed in the axil of another bract in such a way that the pale is exactly opposed to it, though at a slightly higher level.
From the axil of this leaf, that is, between it and the primary axis a l arises a secondary axis a2, ending in a flower f 2, and producing a leaf about the middle.
One argument that has been adduced in support of the axillary bud theory is derived from the Palaeozoic type Cordaites, in which each ovule occurs en an axis borne in the axil of a bract.