530 MR. J. PARKIN ON THE 
erminal flowers (fig. 2, A & B). These latter may have, besides the terminal 
flower, two or three lateral ones, the whole thus forming a rudimentary 
inflorescence (fig. 2, C). 
In P. Moutan, the only arborescent member of the genus, the flowering 
shoot possesses several foliage leaves. The lower ones only produce buds in 
their axils (fig. 2, A). As winter approaches, the shoot dies back as far as 
the uppermost foliage leaf, which bears a bud in its axil. In the following 
spring these buds, produced in the axils of the lower foliage leaves, lengthen 
as shoots, most of them ending in solitary flowers. 
Turning to the herbaceous species—e. g., the common P. officinalis,—the 
leafy shoots which appear above ground in the spring each produce first a 
number of foliage leaves, and then the solitary terminal flower, No buds 
occur in the axils of these leaves (fig. 2, B). The whole dies down in the 
autumn. Next season’s aerial growth is produced from buds in the axils of 
the basal seale-leaves. The foliar shoot, then, of the herbaceous Peony 
would appear to be equivalent only to the upper part of the shoot of 
P. Moutan. The lower foliage leaves of the latter—the ones producing 
buds in their axils—may be regarded as reduced to basal scale-leaves in the 
former. 
The Tree Peony may be considered the older representative of the genus. 
The herbaceous forms of Ponta have probably been derived from the 
arborescent type* through, as it were, downward compression, whereby 
the vegetative branching takes place wholly at or below the ground-level. 
Let us now examine the features of the floral part of the shoot in those 
few species of Pæonia which bear more than one flower. P. albiflora will 
serve for our study, its associates resembling it closely in this respect. Its 
vegetative features are similar to those which have been described for 
P. officinalis, but all the foliar axils on a shoot are not always barren of 
buds. Two, three, or four of the upper ones may produce buds, which 
lengthen into lateral floral shoots, each bearing an apical flower, which 
blooms after the terminal one of the main shoot. These secondary floral 
shoots bear each a pair of reduced leaves (fig. 2, C). 
It is hardly to be disputed that P. Moutan and P. officinalis represent an 
earlier mode of flowering than that of P. albiflora and its associates. In the 
former there are no signs of buds in the axils of the upper foliage leaves. If 
the single terminal flower had arisen through reduction, then arrested buds 
might be expected to occur in these axils, or some other vestigial structure 
to be present suggesting former flowers. The production of flower-buds in 
the upper part of the shoot of P. albiflora and its allies may therefore be 
regarded as a new feature in the genus—in fact, the initial stage towards 
the formation of a distinet inflorescence. These buds are a new addition— 
organs, in fact, arising de novo. The reproductive material, which in the 
* That the arborescent habit has in general preceded the herbaceous in the course of 
evolution, is a view the writer has held for some time. 
