Page:The Journal of Indian Botany, Volume III.djvu/11

 THE

Journal of Indian Botany

Vol. III. MAY, 1922. No. 1.

NOTES ON INDIAN PLANT TERATOLOGY

BY

F. Hallberg,

St. Xavier’s College, Bombay.

I

On a case of simulated abaxial reproductive proliferation of the hypanthium in a flower of Calycopteris floribunda Lamk.

About the middle of March 1921 I came across a few specimens of the shrub Calycopteris floribunda Lamk. close to the dam of the Yehar Lake in Salsette, the plants attracting my attention because of the occasional presence of petals in the flowers, a phenomenon which, as far as I am aware, has not been recorded before. The petals were white, narrowly linear, one to five in number, shorter than the calyx-lobes in flower, and inserted close to the sinus. They were not observed associated with the enlarged fruiting calyx, and turned brown and fell off when a flower was allowed to wither, the calyx- lobes remaining.

While examining these plants, I came across the curious structure shown in Fig. I. in which a complete 4-merous flower bud apparently was subtended by a supernumerary calyx-lobe, iff a flower exhibiting various other irregularities.

At first sight I interpreted this as a case of proliferation of the edge of the hypanthium, the pedicel of the bud in question being fused