THE CYMOSE TYPE. 155 



absent ; in some, either occasionally present or wanting in the 

 same species or individual. It is only by analogy, therefore, 

 and by a comparison of allied plants, that the nature of some of 

 these flower-clusters can be made out. With the botanists of a 

 preceding generation, these one-sided clusters were all described 

 as racemes or spikes. Botanists still find it convenient to con- 

 tinue the use of these names for them in botanical descriptions, 

 adding, however, as occasion requires, the qualification that they 

 are false racemes or spikes, or cymose racemes, and the like ; or 

 else, by reversing the phrase, with stricter correctness they call 

 them racemiform or spiciform cymes, &c. 



284. Commonly these false racemes or spikes (or botr} r oidal 

 cymes, if we so name them) are circinate or inrolled from the 

 apex when young, in the manner of a crosier, straightening as 

 they come into blossom or fruiting. Likening them to a scorpion 

 when coiled, the earlier botanists designated this as scorpioid. 

 As the coil is a helix, it has also been named helicoid.^ The 

 flowers are then thrown, more or less strictly, to the outer side 

 of the coiled rhachis, where there is room for them ; and so these 

 false racemes or spikes are secund or unilateral. The particular 

 anthotaxy and phyllotaxy of the various sympodial and botryoi- 

 dal forms of cymose inflorescence become rather difficult ; and 

 the sorts which have been elaborately classified into species 

 (and have no little morphological interest) are connected by 

 such transitions, and are based on such nice or sometimes theo- 

 retical particulars, that the terminology based on them is seldom 

 conveniently applicable to descriptive botany, at least as to sub- 

 stantive names. 



285. One of the latest and simplest classifications of cymes is 

 that of Eichler in his Bliithendiagramme. 2 



1 Scorpioid and Helicoid have been carefully distinguished by later 

 rnorphologists, on account of some difference in the mode of evolution and 

 arrangement of the flowers along one side of the rhachis, by which they 

 become two-ranked in scorpioid, one-ranked in helicoid. But practically 

 the two kinds of clusters are not always readily discriminated ; and in gen- 

 eral terminology a single name, with subordinate qualifying terms, is suffi- 

 cient. Scorpioid is the older and commoner one, therefore the most proper 

 to be used in the generic sense. 



2 CYMOSE TYPE (classified without reference to bracts, which are so often 



wanting) ; divided into 

 a. Lateral axes three or more: PLEIOCHASIUM, the multiparous cyme oi 



Bravais. 



. Lateral axes two : DICHASIUM, the biparous cyme of Bravais. 

 y. Lateral axis one MONOCHASIUM, the uniparous cyme of Bravais. 



The latter, or the corresponding divisions of the preceding sorts, may be 

 divided as follows : 



