BIOMETRIC DATA ON THE 
INFLORESCENCE AND FRUIT OF CRINUM 
LONGIFOLIUM. 
BY J. ARTHUR HARRIS. 
I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
Crinum longifolium is familiar to botanists through wide 
cultivation or through numerous descriptions and figures. 
At fruiting time, the plants present a remarkable appear- 
ance, the massive fruit clusters bending the stalks to the 
ground, which is strewn with the peculiar seeds. These 
are exceedingly large and fleshy—fine examples of the bulbi- 
form seeds of the Amaryllidaceae. 
Consider some of the problems in the physiology of seed 
production presented by the inflorescence, fruits and seeds. 
The form and size of the fruits is closely related to the 
peculiarities of the seeds. It is neither an elastically de- 
hiscent capsule nor a berry, but resembles a leathern bag, 
which finally softens to spill out its contents. The number 
and size of the contained seeds, and consequently the size 
of the fruit, varies enormously. Some of the seed bags are 
as large as apples, while others are small sterile knobs termi- 
nating the end of the pedicel. In number the seeds range 
from none to seventy, or more, per fruit; in weight, from 
nothing to nine grams. 
If there are differences in the amount of available plastic 
material from inflorescence to inflorescence, or from fruit 
to fruit, or if there is (as has been suggested in biological 
literature) a competition between the various primordia for 
the available material, these factors should, it seems to me, 
be especially easily recognized in structures showing such 
wide extremes. 
These problems attracted my attention several years ago. 
Partly owing to difficulties inherent in the material, partly 
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