THE SO-CALLED SCORPIOID CYME. 619 
‘The following is Payer’s definition of the scorpioid cyme (J. c. p. 100) :—* La cime 
unipare scorpioide peut donc être définie: Une inflorescence dont toutes les fleurs sont 
de génération différente, oppositifoliées et rangées sur deux séries seulement.” 
Payer regards this cyme as being due to an alternate and quincuncial arrangement of 
the bracts of successive sympodial axes, they being also heterodromous successively, so 
that any bract is either to the right or left of the preceding and at an angular distance 
of two fifths of the circumference, or 144^.  Duchartre gives a similar description in his 
* Éléments de Botanique 2nd ed. p. 588, and is apparently followed by Sachs *, at least 
so I interpret the paragraph on p. 160 of the English edition of his Text-book. 
This description of Payer's is far from being in accordance with facts, as seen in the 
so-called scorpioid cyme of the Boraginee, &c. The plants selected by Payer for illus- 
tration are Hyoscyamus and Sedum album. 
In the first place, in the scorpioid cyme, as of Hyoscyamus and Borago, no bract is 
ever exactly opposite to any flower, though it is so in Sedwm. The bracts, as I have de- 
scribed them above, are situated alternately to the right and to the left of each flower 
successively, very near to them, but a little below the level of their insertions +. 
Secondly, they are not placed at an angular distance of 144°, or two fifths of the circum- 
ference, but form two rows diametrically opposite to each other, while the flowers form 
two rows also, but in vertical planes at an angular distance of about 60° apart. 
In Sachs's Text-book (p. 159) the cyme is treated somewhat abstractedly, and that 
author makes no reference to bracts, which are of very great importance in any explana- 
tion of the inflorescence. , 
The editor of the English edition has pointed out that fig. D on p. 159, which I have 
reproduced for convenience (Pl. LXXXV. fig. 7), though described by Sachs as helicoid 
or bostrychoid, corresponds with what is usually called scorpioid in several of our text- 
books. Sachs, however, is more nearly correct, while the latter term is decidedly wrong. 
Figs. A and B of Sachs correspond to Payers cyme unipare, as of Sedum album (P1. 
LXXXV. fig. 5), both being sympodes and presumably having the suecessive branches 
oppositifoliar, though Sachs makes no allusion to bracts. Sachs’s description, therefore, 
applies to the “spicate” cyme, though designated scorpioid eme both by him and 
Payer, and not to the true scorpioid cyme, or rather, as I would now propose to call it, 
“ scorpioid raceme.” 
With regard to fig. C (Sachs, p. 159), which represents the usual form of the so-called 
dichasiwm of Schimper, or dichotomous cyme of the text-books, it is not clear whether 
this figure is supposed by the author to represent accurately a natural state of things 
(which it does not, as all the branches are in one plane), or whether it is only a 
projection of the inflorescence on to the plane of the paper, as, indeed, I take Sachs to 
assume the reader to perceive. The inflorescence itself in nature is more or less 
corymbose, as may be seen in many of the Caryophyllee, Radiola, &c.; and it must be 
- * Sacus, while calling this degradation of a dichasium a scorpioid eyme, recognizes the inflorescence of the 
oragineæ as of a different character (* Text-book,’ p. 522, Engl. ed.). | d o dun. 
= + geo PL LXXXV. fig. 4, in which b indicates the position of the insertion of the bracts; Jf represents the 
he. . pedicels which bore the capsules now removed. | | 
