514 MR. J. PARKIN ON THE 
the term, which literally means the time of flower-bearing. It was 
applied by the great Swedish naturalist to the arrangement of. the flowers 
on the axis or axes. Asa Gray * proposed the term “ Anthotaxy," to 
correspond with phyllotaxy, as preferable to that of “ Inflorescence ” for 
denoting flower-arrangement. However, the latter has persisted and is 
now in constant use in Botany, so little advantage would be gained by 
discarding it for another. 
Inflorescence has often been defined as the mode of branching of the 
floral axis. Van Tieghem + implies as much, though he proceeds to write 
that the term is sometimes given a concrete meaning by applying it to the 
floral group itself. Bentham and Hooker $, in their ‘British Flora,’ 
supply a comprehensive definition including both ideas. ‘The inflorescence 
of a plant is the arrangement of the flowering branches and of the flowers 
upon them. An inflorescence is a flowering branch or the flowering summit 
of a plant above the last stem leaves, with its branches, bracts and flowers.” 
It seems futile to quibble over the question whether inflorescence means the 
mode of floral branching or the flower-group itself, Custom has sanctioned 
the latter meaning. When we speak of the inflorescence of a plant we 
employ the word as a concrete noun and apply it to the flower-cluster itself. 
It is in this sense that the word is used in this paper. The mode of 
branching of the flower-bearing axes of the inflorescence becomes one line 
for study. The sequence in which the individual flowers open is another, 
The character of the internodes, such as their proportional length or their 
suppression, is a third. The origin of flower-clusters and the phylogenetic 
relationship between the various kinds, that is to say the evolution of the 
inflorescence, furnish a further line of investigation, embracing as it were 
all the others. 
Literature on the subject of the Evolution of the Inflorescence is indeed 
scanty. Bichler gave the lead in his ‘ Bliithendiagramme,’ 1875, to an 
evolutionary study of the inflorescence, but it has hardly at all been 
followed. 
To Linnæus§ we are indebted for the names of the common forms of 
flower-groupings such as cyme, raceme, spike, unibel, etc. 
Robert Brown ||, that deep-sighted observer, who, though never voluminous 
in his writings, usually managed to alight upon something new and funda- 
mental, called attention to some genera of the Composite ( Kchinops, Lagascea, 
* Gray, Asa, ‘ Structural Botany,’ 6th edit., London, p. 141, 1879. 
t Tieghem, P. E. L. van, ‘ Traité de Botanique,' 2nd edit., p. 342, 1891. 
t Bentham, G., ‘Handbook of the British Flora, 6th edit., by J. D. Hooker, p. xxii, 
1892, 
$ Linneus, C., Systema Natura, ed. 12, Tom. ii. Holmis, p. 16, 1767. 
|| Brown, R., Trans. Linnean Soc., London, vol. xii. (1818) pp. 93-95. 
