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Botanical Notes from Bainbridge, Georgia. 
By Auc. F. ForERsTE. 
Rectangular Inflorescences—Nature is usually a graceful de- 
signer. Many flowers rather stiff and insignificant in themselves 
become charming from the skillful taste with which they are 
arranged in inflorescences. Upon a person accustomed to be 
alert in seeking the beauties of nature, the first sight of Siphon- 
ychia diffusa, Chapman, produces a queer effect, half of surprise 
and half of discomfort. Here is a plant with its flowers laid out 
in rectangular inflorescences—cymes with a flat top, with quad- 
ratic outlines, or of a form which at once makes us wish to say 
parallelopipedon, as though the other dimensions were equally 
stiff and rectangular. In these rectangles the flowers are laid off 
almost with the precision of corn rows in a field. This general 
effect is not lessened, in what seems a vain attempt of nature at 
grace, by the way in which these rectangular inflorescences are 
arranged on the stem; for, the stems being almost prostrate, all the 
branches being terminated by inflorescences at such heights as 
to bring all the inflorescences to within approximately the same 
plane, and the inflorescences being all disposed with their diag- 
onals vertical or parallel to the stem, their sides all become paral- 
lel, so that the final effect is that of a series of rectangular fields, 
set out in some Western landscape, where all lines run north and 
south or east and west. In the case of this plant, we might say 
northeast and southwest, northwest and southeast. . The fact that 
adjacent cymes are somefimes disposed ‘at slightly different levels, 
suggests the effects of hillsides. The plant must be seen to be 
appreciated. It should occur in every botanical garden. 
The lower branches consist of, first, two opposite leaves, bear- 
ing in the axil nearest the stem an inflorescence about half the 
size of the two inflorescences into which the other branches di- 
vide. The flowers usually terminate the seventh node from the 
main stem, all the terminal buds of the branchlets except the last 
being terminated by abortion at the end of each node, so that the | 
cyme is a product of seven successive branchings of the stem. 
A curious Correllation between Sympodial Development of 
Branches and the Retention of Stipules in Leguminose— Two 
