= 
THEIR FORMS AND FUNCTIONS. 467 
along their posterior edges. The stipules further are two or three 
times as long as the petiole, the free portions being connate by 
both edges like a candle-extinguisher over the bud, so that their 
leaf appears to spring from the back. The lamina of the leaf is 
twice conduplicate, and the two folds one over the other slightly 
convolute round the upper portion of their own stipules. 
As the bud lengthens the protecting stipules become dry and 
straw-coloured, the petiole remaining green; they gradually split 
or separate by a regular fissure at both edges and fall away either 
slightly united at the apex in pairs or separately. As they are 
adnate to the petiole, there is some reason to assume that the 
stipules once formed a sheath pure and simple to the leaf of some 
ancestralform. After expansion, the petiole elongates above the 
points to which the stipules were adnate. 
The flower-buds are formed in autumn at the ends of the 
shoots, and are generally protected by four pairs of connate 
stipules adnate to a petiole without a lamina. In spring they 
behave in the same way as the stipules of the Jeaf-buds. The 
petiole of the leaf immediately enclosing the flower-bud is com- 
pletely amalgamated with the stipules. Sometimes a perfect, 
though small lamina is produced with a petiole prolonged beyond 
the stipules, the free portion of which is short and triangular. 
The pair immediately enclosing the flower form a club-shaped cap 
in accordance with the shape of the flower and its peduncle. 
Magnolia Umbrella, Lam. (syn. M. tripetaia, Linn.), agrees in all 
essential points with the above as far as the stipules are concerned ; 
but in some leaves the edges of the basal part of the lamina are 
adnate to the upper part of the stipular sheath, leaving only a 
small portion of the tip free. 
In the monotypic genus Lactoris, comprising Engler’s Lacto- 
ridacew and placed by him next to Magnoliacex from its affinity 
with Drimys (see ‘ Pflanzenfamilien,’ Magnol. p. 19), the stipules 
form an ocrea-like structure embracing the succeeding internode. 
Lactoris is included by Bentham in Piperacee. 
BERBERIDEA. 
In Lardizabala biternata, Ruiz et Pav., stipules are absent, 
but the leaves of axillary shoots appear like stipules. When the 
shoots with their evergreen and leathery leaves are fully matured, 
the buds in the axils of the leaves swell up and produce a small, 
simple, obliquely-ovate or cordate leat right and er of the axis. 
LINN. JOURN.— BOTANY, VOL. XXX. 
