Bract synonyms

nearest to the supporting stem, becomes in course of growth turned to the anterior or lower part of the flower nearest to the bract, from whose axil it arises.

Except where it is terminal it arises, like the leaf-shoot, in the axil of a leaf, which is then known as a bract.

In the male flower the receptacle is "concrescent" or inseparate from the bract in whose axil it originates.

Thus a bract may be regarded, with Haeckel, as a modified umbrella of a medusa, a siphon as its manubrium, and a tentacle as representing a medusan tentacle shifted in attachment from the margin to the sub-umbrella; or a siphon may be compared with a polyp, of which the single tentacle has become shifted so as to be attached to the coenosarc and so on.

The phylogeny of the various floral leaves, for instance, was generally traced as follows: foliage-leaf, bract, sepal, petal, stamen and carpel (sporophylls)in accordance with what Goethe termed ascending metamorphosis.