GYMNOSPERMA E. CONIFER AE. 



323 



the mother-shoot has grown ; the female flowers are in the place of one of the buds, 

 one to four in number, which stand in a false whorl at the summit of the shoot, 

 and develope into lateral branches. In Gingko the flowers are exclusively on the 

 short lateral shoots which annually produce new rosettes of leaves, in the axils 

 of the foliage-leaves or of the inner scales of the buds (Fig. 251 A, J3}. 



The part of the floral axis beneath the sporangia or the sporophylls is densely 

 covered with scale-leaves or foliage-leaves in the female plant of Taxus, Jtmiperus, 

 Finns, and others (Figs. 252, 253), but it is developed as a naked stalk in the 

 Abietineae, Gingko (Fig. 251 A, ), the male plant of Taxus, Podocarpus, etc. The 

 flowers of the Cycadeae and Coniferae are peculiar in the circumstance that the axis 



FIG. 251. Gingko biloba, natural size. A a short lateral leafy shoot with female flowers ; sk macrosporangia. A' 

 a male flower. C a portion of a male flower magnified ; a the pollen-sacs. D longitudinal section of an ovule of -/ 

 enlarged. E a ripe seed by the side of an abortive seed on the flowering axis. 



elongates, even when covered with sporophylls ; if there are many of them, the 

 whole flower is long and conical and resembles a catkin in outward appearance, and 

 is in fact termed a catkin in the superficial language of many systematic botanists, 

 though the amentum of Dicotyledons is an inflorescence while the apparent catkin of 

 the Coniferae is a single flower. In the Angiosperms the flowering shoot usually 

 undergoes a peculiar transformation throughout, the portion of the axis which bears 

 the parts of the flower, the torus, remaining very short and becoming broader, and 

 the floral envelope-leaves and the sporophylls appearing in positions very different 

 from those of the vegetative shoots. But the difference between the flower and a 

 vegetative shoot is much less in the Coniferae, as is seen chiefly in the relative 

 positions of the leaves ; if the leaves of the vegetative shoots are arranged spirally, 

 those of the flower are usually arranged in the same way, as for instance in the 

 Abietineae ; if on the other hand they are in alternating whorls, as in the Cupres- 

 sineae, the sporophylls are also in alternating whorls; occasionally however there are 

 greater differences in the arrangement of the leaves in the flower as compared with 

 that in the vegetative shoots ; this is the case in Taxtis. 



Y 2 



