246 
very long, in seven to ten pairs. Spikes 10 to 30 cm. in length, 
their lower portion often submerged. 
A few of the intermediate flowers perfect. Petals oval, rose-col- 
ored. Stamens four. Fruit in specimens sent by the collector, Mr. 
Pringle, about 2 mm. long by 1 to 1% mm. broad, the carpels 
sharply angled and ridged and occasionally scabrate on the back, 
with a deep, narrow groove between them. 
No. 2,017, Pringle, Chihuahua, Mexico, Oct., 6, 1888. 
11. M. laxum. Shutt. in Chapman FI. 143 (1860). 
Leaves in whorls of fours, the floral usually shorter than the 
flowers, the lowest pectinate-toothed or pinnatifid, the uppermost 
entire, linear or narrowly spatulate, sometimes all of them minute, 
leaving the spike apparently naked ; submerged 10 to 20 cm. in 
length, the capillary divisions about five on a side, and placed ir- 
regularly on the rachis. Petals pink, sub-persistent. Stamens 
eight. Fruit nearly 2 mm. long, by 14% mm. wide ; carpels round- 
ed on the back, strongly tuberculate-rugose. 
Ponds in middle and west Florida (Chapman). 
12. M. Farwelltiz. Morong. 
Recently published in these columns—BULL. TORR. BOT. 
Cup, for May, 1891. Collected by O. A. Farwell on the Ke- 
weenaw Peninsula, Michigan. : 
Intra-carpillary Pistils and other Floral Derangements. 
By Byron D. HALSTED. 
Plate CXXI. 
The normal Petunza flower is five-merous with its stamens ad- 
herent to the corolla tube for one half their length. In the 
double varieties, instead of these five stamens there may be from 
none to seven perfect ones, with a range of from one to fifteen 
which are partly transformed into petals. An average of fifteen 
blossoms gave 3.7 perfect stamens, and 5.3 more or less petaloid, 
As the corolla proper is trumpet shaped, the transformed stamens 
have but little space in the tube, and the petaline structures, 
therefore, are usually much twisted and contorted, especially for 
the lower portion, and frequently they are united to each other 
and to the inner wall of the surrounding corolla. In studying these 
peculiar flowers as found in abundance in the gardens, my atten- 
tion was drawn to the unusual size of the petals, which, instead 
