BULLETIN 



OF THE 



TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. XV.] New York 



[No. 8. 



4 



The Fruit of Cal^canthus, L, 



A recent close inspection of sev^eral hundred ripe pods of 



Calycanthus glaucus, Willd., gathered on the Cumberland Moun- 



] . tains in Eastern Tennessee, enables me to give a somewhat 



detailed account of this rare and interesting fruit. The best 

 description oi it known to me Is that of Nuttall (Gen. N. A. PI., 



''Capsule turbinate," says this delightful old botanist, "as 

 large as a small pear^ marked with vestiges of the calycine laciniae, 

 at length becoming perfectly dry, but never opening." A few 

 of the pods I examined were almost typically turbinate, perfectly 

 flat across the top and tapering to the base, but curving slightly 

 outwards. The prevailing shape, however, was more nearly 

 obovoid or pyriform, the upper third being rounded. Some were 

 slender and elongated, resembling small cucumbers, and one was 

 distinctly ovoid, broadest below the middle and tapering upwards. 

 Many were very irregularly protuberant or collapsed, these vari- 

 ations in form depending on the development or abortion of the 

 ovaries within, and several were remarkably incurved, the summit 

 and base almost meeting after the fashion of a campylotropous 

 ovule. This curious form results from the development of two 

 or three ovaries ohc above, the other and the abortion of all the 



rest. 



"g 



seemed to belong to two or three distinct species, but the com- 

 plete gradation of intermediate forms made It impossible to draw 

 ' ^"^Y specific line. As to size, Nuttall's rather vague ''as large as 

 a small pear" (or Wood's ''size of a fig") may be taken as a 

 correct average statement, but as a matter of fact the pods ex- 

 amined, all mature and containing perfect achenia, ranged from 

 half an Inch to over three inches In length, and from one-third 

 ^^ an inch to an Inch and a half In q-rcatest diameter. The 



