Receptacle

Receptacle, a term variously employed in descriptive botany, but mostly used for the axial portion of a capitulum (q.v.) or of a single flower. The former is distinguished as a common receptacle - one, that is, common to a whole inflorescence; and the latter as the floral receptacle, thalamus, or torus. The internodes of the latter are not generally elongated; but, when elongated, the internode between the calyx and corolla is termed an anthophore; that between corolla and stamens, a gynandrophore (q.v.); that between stamens and carpels, a gynophore (q.v.); and that between the carpels a carpophore, as in the Geraniacere and Umbelliferae (q.v.). Other modifications of, and outgrowths from, the receptacle are known as the disk. This may be represented, as in the Cruciferae (q.v.), by separate glandular outgrowths excreting honey, and included, therefore, under the head of nectaries (q.v.), or they may be fleshy cup-like oiring-shaped bodies. Thus in Victoria regia (q.v.) the receptacle grows up round and imbeds the ovary, making it inferior, and carrying .calyx. corolla, and stamens on an annular or ring-shaped disk, making them strictly perigynous; in mignonette, there is a fleshy one-sided plate within the corolla bearing the stamens and ovary, and thushy poyynous; in the orange group, it is a cushion-like mass below the ovary; in the peony, it is a cup enclosing the carpels; in Alchemilla, a perigynous fleshy ring round the inner surface of a tubular receptacle or "calyx-tube;" and in the Umbelliferae, an epigynous cushion carried to the top of the carpels by the adherent [i.e. superior) calyx-tube. It is thus mainly dependent upon the receptacle whether the so-called "insertion" of the petals and stamens be hypogybous, perigynous, or epigynous - a point of primary importance in classification.