274 MR. A, W. BENNETT Off CLETSTOGAMIC FLOWERS. 



served withered abortive capsules, evidently the result o£ cleis- 

 togamic flowers, which contained nothing but unimpregnated 

 ovules. 



On specimens of V. sylvatica observed in the Begent's Park 

 Botanic Gardens near the end of September, I found two flowers 

 which presented interesting stages of transition between the per- 

 fect and the cleistogamic forms. In the first, the corolla con- 

 sisted of five spathulate petals, blue, and slightly exserted beyond 

 the calyx, one of them being much larger than the rest and swollen 

 at the base, but not prolonged into a spur. There were four an- 

 theriferous stamens, nearly the shape of those in the ordinary 

 cleistogamic flowers, but with rather shorter filaments, two 01 

 them uniting into the usual hood-like cap to the stigma. The 

 pollen-grains were very numerous, the shape and size of those ot 

 the perfect flowers, and were putting out abundance of pollen- 

 tubes into the tissue of the stigma, one grain being observed 

 with as many as three tubes. The style and stigma were nearly 

 the shape of those of the ordinary closed flowers, but the stig- 

 matic surface not so flat. In the second flower the corolla con- 

 sisted of five nearly white, very imperfectly developed petals. 

 The stamens and pistil were those of the perfect flowers — the 

 former, five in number, having all sessile anthers surmounted by 

 a bright orange-yellow prolongation of the connective, while the 

 ovary terminated in a long narrow style and beak -like stigma, 

 bent nearly at right angles. No indication was observed of im- 

 pregnation of the ovules. In the first of these intermediate 

 flowers, therefore, the organs of reproduction partook almost 

 entirely of the character of those of the usual cleistogamic flowers, 

 with the exception of the form and size of the pollen-grains, which 

 were entirely, and the corolla partially, of the nature of those 

 found in the perfect flowers. The second was an ordinary perfect 

 flower, with the exception of the rudimentary corolla. 



V.floiibunda, Jord. (France), — The cleistogamic flowers are borne 

 in the axils of the leaves on the low creeping stems which develop 

 in the summer and autumn. The calyx, consisting of five nearly 

 equal lanceolate sepals without auricles, is borne on an elongated 

 hairy pedicel. The corolla consists of five brown, equal, mem- 

 branous scales, nearly as large as the sepals, which form a cap 

 completely covering up the reproductive organs. There are five 

 stamens, all fertile, with a brown hood-like membrane to the con- 

 nective rising above the anther-lobes, resembling that of V. cu- 



