STRUCTURE OF IMPATIENS FULVA. 151 
pents, and Plants of that Country, &c. By John Josselyn, Qent., 
London, 1675 *. “The Humming-bird Tree” (the drawing which 
accompanies it shows the plant described under this title to be 
Impatiens fulva). “This plant the Humming-bird feedeth upon, 
it groweth also in wet grounds, and is not at its full growth till 
July. It is garnished at the top with many dangling yellow 
flowers of a bright yellow colour.” If this statement be correct, 
the manner in which the flower of the Impatiens is suspended 
appears admirably adapted for the Humming-bird to insert its 
head into the horizontal cornucopia-shaped * nectary " or pos- 
terior sepal, in doing which it would be almost certain to brush 
its head with sufficient force against the stamens to cause them 
to become detached, carrying with them the membrane which 
protects the stigma. But this can only be conjecture. 
As to the relative abundance of the two kinds of flowers, and 
the time of the year at which they appear, I have never found 
the two kinds on the same branch, occasionally on different 
branches of the same plant, but more often on separate plants. 
This would account for the fact that the inconspicuous flowers 
are not to be found in herbaria. In the case of I. noli-me- 
tangere, Mr. Bentham and Dr. Boswell-Syme describe the two 
kinds of flowers as growing intermixed in the same raceme, 
although this is not borne out by Dr. Syme’s own drawing. In 
the early part of September I found the inconspicuous-flowered 
plants to outnumber those with conspicuous flowers, certainly in 
the proportion of twenty to one. Walking for half a mile along 
both banks of the stream, in some places thickly fringed with the 
plant, I had some difficulty in finding thirty or forty specimens 
for the herbarium. The two kinds of plants grow, however, 
completely intermixed. Prof. Asa Gray states that “the mi- 
nute fertile flower-buds begin to be produced earlier than the 
ordinary blossoms.” Weddell, on the other hand, in the case of 
I, noli-me-tangere, asserted the inconspicuous flowers to be the 
latest, which assertion Mohl takes to be a lapsus calami, he 
having found in June abundance of these, while no trace of the 
more conspicuous flowers was to be found—whereas in Sep- 
tember the latter were abundant, while the former had entirely 
disappeared. My own observation of T. fulva would lead me to 
suppose that the two kinds of flowers are absolutely synchronous. 
* Quoted in the ‘Proceedings of the Essex Institute’ (Massachusetts) for 
1857. 
