One apparently most lavish method of securing fertilization is the arrangement of flowers in clusters. While many flowers are quite solitary, the great mass of individual plants produce a few or dozens, or even hundreds of flowers--in fact, certain relatives of the common carrot may produce over a thousand flowers in a single cluster. The form and plan of arrangement of these clusters follows a rather definite scheme, and here, as in the case of leaves and parts of individual flowers, the figures tell the story better than words. In the common dandelion and daisy, and their thousands of relatives, the “flower” (Figures 43-45), as commonly understood, is really composed of scores or even hundreds of true flowers in each head. In the case of the daisy the yellow center, if picked apart, is seen to be really made up of scores of tiny tubular flowers, each just as truly a flower as a single rose. The rays, or what are incorrectly called “petals,” which fringe the golden center with white, if carefully separated and examined closely, will be found to be also a complete flower, the true petals of which are all joined to make the strap-shaped ray. If one looks sharply, the united edges of these petals may be seen by the ridges or channels that represent their joined edges. Because plants of this sort produce two sets of flowers in each head, one conspicuous by its brightly colored rays and with another tubular set in the center which makes doubly certain the fertilization and seed supply, they are considered the most highly developed of all plants. It is not a close aristocracy, nor an exclusive one, for over eleven thousand different kinds of plants, scattered all over the world, have their flowers arranged in this fashion or some slight modification of it. They possess, above all others, the certainty that there will be no slip in their fertilization, pregnancy, and subsequent birth of a new generation. Because this is the great object of all flowers, and these daisylike plants have brought it to such perfection, they are most surely to be classed as the highest type upon the earth to-day. [Illustration: FIGS. 46-50.--TYPES OF FLOWER CLUSTERS Fig. 46. A spike, the individual flowers attached directly to the common stalk. Fig. 47. A raceme, a spikelike cluster where individual flowers are stalked. Fig. 48. An umbel, the individual flower stalks all arising from one point. Fig. 49. Individual flower stalks of different lengths but the cluster usually flat-topped (corymb). Fig. 50. A flower cluster in which the end of the stem is terminated by a flower from the base of which side branchlets similarly tipped with flowers arise (cyme).]