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DB. M. T. MASTERS OS THE MORPHOLOGY, 



Mr. Meehan 



deviations 



from the usual course of the fibro-vascular bundles in 

 stem 



the 





It does not, however, fall within the scope of this paper to do 



itology 



Goep- 



pert, Schacht, Bertrand, Eenault, and others have investigated 

 the subject, and shown bow in certain cases the genera may be dis- 

 tinguished by the number and disposition of the areolar punctua- 

 tions and tracheids as well as by the position of the resin-canals. 

 Dr. Mayr also, in his ' Waldungen von Nord- America,' p. 424, 

 arranges the sections of Pinus according to the construction of 

 the wood. 



The Male Elowers. 







The male flowers of Conifers consist of a number of stamens, 

 each mostly with a filament and an anther or inieros£orange. 

 These are arranged in various ways at the ends or on the sides of 

 the shoots, so as to resemble the "catkins" of an amentaceous 

 inflorescence. Much controversy has, indeed, arisen as to whether 

 the seeming amenta of these plants are really to be considered 

 as inflorescences composed of a series of axes bearing numerous 

 monandrous, naked flowers, or as single, polyandrous flowers. 



Following Linnaeus, Griffith considered the aggregate of stamens 

 to constitute a single flower. The reasons assigned by Griffith 

 for this opinion were the absence of bracts or scales intermixed 

 with the individual stamens and the unjointed condition of the 

 filaments. The stamens are serially continuous with the leaves, 

 in spires in the Abietinese, or in decussate whorls in the Cupres- 



Monstrous 



to leaves, as in some species of Podocarpus and Araucaria, 

 well as in Abietineaef. 



as 







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* Van Tieghera, ' Traite,' p. 737, says that the vascular bundles of Thuya 

 form four sympodes which traverse the stem in a wavy or undulated manner. 

 At each node is given off to the left a branch which runs through only one 

 internode before it reaches a leaf. The leaves are thus in alternate pairs; and 

 a transverse section shows six bundles —four cauline and two foliar ; a subdi- 

 vision of one of the foliar bundles would naturally accompany the formation 

 of an additional leaf, as when a dimerous whorl becomes trimerous. 



t The now generally adopted view that the aggregate of stamens constitutes 

 one flower was, as above stated, held bv Linnaus. who included several genera or 



Conifers under his class Monadelphia (Poiyandria), assigning 

 of Pinus a 4-leaved calyx. Griffith, Itin. Notes, p. 376; 





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