174 MR. T. H. CORRY ON ASCLEPIAS CORNUTI. 
Solanacez, Labiatz, Scrophularinese, Borraginese, &c., but each is isolated, and forms a 
distinct ovary surmounted for some distance by a distinct style. Тһе growth of the 
carpellary leaves is basifugal, and in consequence the apices of their styles are the last 
parts to be formed. These latter are never incurved, as is the case with the rest of the 
сатре]з ; they are at first quite distinct from one another, but soon begin to become 
thickened and fleshy, and then exhibit a more or less rounded or club-shaped form. Each 
contains a single fibro-vascular bundle. The growth of the pistil is also accompanied by 
that of the other floral whorls, and the stamens and corolla press closely upon the sides 
of the gynzeceum ; thus it comes to pass that the carpels become more closely pressed 
together, especially in their stylar parts. These still remain distinct below, but their 
apices, which are in a meristematic condition, become first applied together by their 
internal faces, and then so intimately fused by these same parts that all sign of sutural 
union between them disappears; for at a somewhat later epoch no trace of the former 
line of demarcation can be defined in the now homogeneous tissue. The two fibro- 
vascular bundles, which at first pursued a straight course upwards through the styles to 
their apices, are now found to have undergone a curvature inwards at the point where 
the upper parts of the styles which still remain distinct pass into the combined apical 
portions, so that the vertical parts of the bundles in the lower parts of the styles are now 
exterior to those in the fused upper parts. The combined apices form a single body 
common to the two ovaries containing two closely approximated fibro-vascular bundles. 
This body grows out rapidly, especially in the intervals between the anthers, forming a 
thick, fleshy, pentagonal table-shaped disk, which may be termed the s¢yle-table, and 
which is depressed above so as to appear truncate. The angles of its margin alternate 
with the stamens. It completely hides the lower free parts of the two styles in a down- 
ward view. The question of the morphological nature of the style-table in Asclepias is of 
some considerable interest in connexion with the morphology of Ше gynzeceum generally. 
The view which I have adopted is directly opposed to that which is most usually received, 
and is supported, so far as I am aware, only by the great authority of Lindley * and 
Eichler. The generally accepted opinion is that first put forward by Nicolas Joseph 
Jacquin +, and since supported by such eminent observers as Robert Brown, Payer, 
Schacht, and likewise many others 1. These regard the common disk-shaped mass as 
formed by the fusion or lateral union, not of two style-apices, but of two terminal stigmas, 
the styles proper remaining distinct throughout their whole extent. If the view of 
Jacquin and his followers, that its nature is stigmatic, be true, we are presented with the 
eurious anomaly of the prolongation of fibro-vascular bundles into the substance ofa tissue 
whose main objeet is to be receptive and secretory, but which is only so over a very 
limited area; and it is clear that since the pentagonal disk-shaped mass formed by the 
fusion of the upper parts of the styles in Apocynaceze possesses the same peculiarity and 
* * An Introduction to Botany,’ 4th edition, 1848, vol. ii. pp. 223, 224. 
+ ‘Miscellanea Austriaca ad Botanicam, Chemiam, et Historiam Naturalem spectantia, vol. i. sect. i., “ Genitalia 
Asclepiadearum,” pp. 1—81, plates 1—4, also “ Genitalia Asclepiadearum controversa," Vienne, 1811. 
t J. Sachs, in the 2nd English edition of his * Text-Book of Botany,’ 1882, adopts the same view, pp. 222 
and 569. 
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