Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/403

 SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. 375

exterior row, because alternate with the petals, inclined forwards into the centre of the Howers ; and in some instances the five styles were actually curled round the stamens in a very singular manner. In some flowers on the same plants, as is the habit with this species, the number of styles was reduced to four, or even three; and equally in the case of tliese'un- symmetrical flowers three or four of the stamens stand forward from the rest, to receive, as it were, the embraces of as many styles. There were quite a number of flowers expanded which presented the above features. — Alfred W. Bennett. (See also ' Nature,' for October 26.)

��Akrangement for Cross-Ffrtilization of the Flowers of ScROPHULARiA NODOSA.-^It is probable that the dichogamy of the flowers of Scrophiiloria has been already observed and published ; "but it was new to me, until pointed out this season by my assistant Dr. Farlow. The ar- rangement is this : — In the freshly-opened blossom the upper part of the style is bent forward so as to bring the stigma now ready for pollen, just over the patent lower lip of the corolla ; the anthers, not yet dehiscent, are out of sight towards the bottom of the corolla ; the filaments being strongly recurved or doubled over. In the blossom a day or two older, the stigma has dried up, the style become flabby, and the filaments have straightened so as to bring the four anthers up to the gorge of the corolla at the base of the lower bp, just back of the now withering stigma ; the transversely dehiscent anthers are now widely open. The flowers are visited by honey-bees, which barely insert their heads into the gorge of the flowers ; the chin or throat of the bee, coming into contact with the lower lip of the corolla, is necessarily dusted Avith pollen from the older flowers; and this pollen, in the passage from flower to flower and plant to plant, is inevitably api)lied to the stigma of the freshly-opened flowers, which alone is in condition to receive it. The nectar sought by insects is here secreted abundantly by the corolla, at its base on the posterior side, and to some extent by the disk which girds the base of the ovary ; the posterior face of tlu' scale, which represents the anther of the fifth stamen, is apparently glandular, but hardly, if at all, nectariferous. Bees plunge their proboscis to the bottom of the flower. — Dii. Asa Gray in SiUuiiaits Journal, August, 1871.

��PIypocotyledonary GEMMATION is of uucommon occurrence. My altention has been called by Mr. Gucrincan, the gardener of the Cambridge ]?otanic Garden, to a remarkable instance which occurs in all our seedlings oi Del jildniKtii nudicaule, tlieuni(iue red or red-and-yellow-ilowered species of California. As this species is now in European cultivation, and a pro- bable variety of it — D. cnrdinah — was raised aiul figured in England several years ago, the peculiarity in question is likely to have been noted ; but I have seen no account of it. In germination the slender radicle elevates a pair of well-formed ovate cotyledons in the usual way. These acquire full development, but no plumule appears between them ; conse- quently the primary axis is here arrested. Soon a nasiform thickening is formed undeigronnd at the junction of the lower end of the radicle with the true root ; from this is produced a slender petioled 3-lobed leaf, which comes up l)y the side of the primary plantlet ; soon a second leaf appears,

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