318 CLEISTOGAMIC FLOWERS. Chap. VIII. 



Viola nana. — Mr. Scott sent me seeds of this Indian 

 species from the Sikkim Terai, from which I raised 

 many plants, and from these other seedlings during 

 several successive generations. They produced an 

 abundance of cleistogamic flowers during the whole of 

 each summer, but never a perfect one. When Mr. Scott 

 wrote to me his plants in Calcutta were behaving simi- 

 larly, though his collector saw the species in flower in 

 its native site. This case is valuable as showing that 

 we ought not to infer, as has sometimes been done, 

 that a species does not bear perfect flowers when grow- 

 ing naturally, because it produces only cleistogamic 

 flowers under culture. The calyx of these flowers is 

 sometimes formed of only three sepals; two being 

 actually suppressed and not merely coherent with the 

 others; this occurred with five out of thirty flowers 

 which were examined for this purpose. The petals are 

 represented by extremely minute scales. Of the sta- . 

 mens, two bear anthers which are in the same state as 

 in the previous species, but, as far as I could judge, 

 each of the two cells contained only from 20 to 25 deli- 

 cate transparent pollen-grains. These emitted their 

 tubes in the usual manner. The three other stamens 

 bore very minute rudimentary anthers, one of which was 

 generally larger than the other two, but none of them 

 contained any pollen. In one instance, however, a sin- 

 gle cell of the larger rudimentary anther included a 

 little pollen. The style consists of a short flattened tube, 

 somewhat expanded at its upper end, and this forms an 

 open channel leading into the ovarium, as described 

 under V. canina. It is slightly bent towards the two 

 fertile anthers. 



Viola Roxburghiana. — This species bore in my hot- 

 house during two years a multitude of cleistogamic 

 flowers, which resembled in all respects those of the 



