FRUIT OF MELOCANNA BAMBUSOIDES. 419 
structure to prepare it for a period of rest and to protect it during that state. On the 
contrary, everything points to the immediate transition from maturation to germination, 
which is characteristic of all viviparous plants. It may be asked in how far the term 
* vivipary " is applicable to Melocanna bambusoides. Of course if we contine it to 
those cases where the embryo pierces the fruit whilst it is still in connection with the 
mother-plant, we could only speak of this bamboo as “ faeultatively viviparous;" but this 
does not seem to be correct. Where the fruit of Melocanna agrees with other fruits 
commonly admitted as viviparous is in the development of the embryo outside the 
embryo-sac and at the expense of the mother-plant. Whether the separation from the 
latter occurs, in Melocanna, before or after the actual piercing of the pericarp is not 
much more than an accident, possibly dependent on the weight of the fruit and the 
tensile strength of the fruit-stalk, or external factors, as storm or rain, The uninterrupted 
development of the embryo is practically safeguarded in both cases. The remarkable 
cireumstance, however, in which this instance of vivipary differs from all the others known 
so far, is the ample supply of reserve food with which the seedling starts its independent 
life. 
VIII. CONCLUSION. 
I will now try to summarize the results of my investigations into the strueture and 
the germination of the fruit of Melocanna, mainly with respect to the points in which 
it deviates from the typieal grass fruit, and to examine how far these structural 
modifications are correlated with functional differences. 
The ordinary grass fruit is small, indeed very small, compared with the fruit of 
Melocanna. The pericarp is dead; its functions are essentially mechanical, and it'is 
accordingly developed as a thin crustaceous or skinny and dry shell which in the course 
of development has become adnate to the seed. The testa is a delicate and often obscure 
membrane, likewise dead, which is fused to the pericarp, and if it has any function 
worth mentioning it goes to strengthen the pericarp. The reserve materials required 
for the germinating embryo are deposited in the endosperm, which forms the bulk of the 
fruit. The embryo itself is usually small, although already well differentiated and free 
of starch, the scutellum acting merely as sucker on the endosperm. Maturity attained, 
the fruit separates from the mother-plant, and the embryo starts an independent lite 
after a shorter or longer period of rest. All this is very different here. In Melocanna 
the pericarp attains relatively enormous proportions, remains fleshy, although rather 
hard and tough, and it has an active and very important share in the metabolism of the 
Its functions are, in the first place, those of an ample 
of the cell-contents as well as of the cell-walls. A 
spread through the pericarp in concentric 
go to build up, feed, 
ith water if the fruit 
maturing and germinating fruit. 
reserve depot, the reserves consisting 
well-developed system of vascular strands, , e 
arrangement, serves to convey and distribute the materials which 
and fill the growing fruit, and possibly also to supply the embryo w p 
germinates whilst still on the tree. The strands enter the fruit at the base, where 1t 1s 
attached to the rhachilla that acts as fruit-stalk. This is, considering the size of the 
fruit and the amount of the nutritive matter and water which have to pass nd o 
