EVOLUTION OF THE INFLORESCENCE. 551 
Kerria japonica may occasionally show flowers borne like those of 
Chimonanthus, with the foliage leaves reduced to scales. In this plant, then, 
all gradations from the solitary flower terminal to a long many-leaved shoot, 
to solitary axillary ones can be found. 
(2) Type of solitary axillary flower commonly, but not exclusively, exhibited 
by climbing and trailing plants. 
Climbing and trailing plants often produce their flowers singly in the 
axils of the foliage leaves. As the shoot climbs or creeps, the flower-buds 
arise successively from the axils of the unfolding leaves. Since few flowers 
are in bloom ona shoot at one time, since the internodes are long, and since 
the subtending leaf-organs are foliar in character, there is no resemblance 
to aninflorescence. The flower appears to be both solitary and axillary. 
Such an arrangement of axillary flowers seems capable of being derived 
indirectly from the solitary terminal flower, the feebly differentiated di-, 
tri-, or pleiochasium being the intermediate type of inflorescence, which 
was possessed probably by the non-climbing ancestor. Species of two 
genera, Clematis and Convolvulus, are now to be considered, which lend 
support to this view. 
Clematis—This genus, besides climbers, contains erect shrubby and 
herbaceous forms. Probably the ancestor of the genus had a shrubby non- 
climbing habit, and from it have come both climbing and herbaceous forms *, 
Three species have been studied in the living state. Their flower-arrange- 
ments lead from a simple, ill-defined, cymose clustering to a stage very near 
the solitary axillary flower. 
C. integrifolia is a herbaceous non-climbing perennial with simple leaves. 
The main shoots terminate each in a flower. Secondary lateral leafy shoots 
are produced from the axils of the upper leaves on the main shoot; these 
also end each in a flower. The mode ot flower-bearing is thus somewhat 
transitional between the solitary terminal flower and the loose leafy simple 
cymose cluster. 
C. Jackmanni (of hybrid origin).—This fine garden clematis is a climber. 
The long main primary stems bear numerous pairs of pinnate leaves, and 
finally each stem ends in a terminal flower, which is the first to bloom. 
From the axils of the upper pairs of foliage leaves arise secondary shoots. 
Each of these bears a pair of simple entire foliar bracts, and ends in a flower 
on a long stalk. Each foliar bract produces a tertiary floral shoot of 
alike nature. The flowers of the secondary shoots open in the ascending 
order. 
* It must not, however, be too readily assumed that all the self-supporting Species are 
primitive; some may have become so through the loss of the climbing habit. 
