Plantayo Lanceolata Ramosa. 153 
seedling grows out into a short, somewhat oblique, rhi- 
zom which produces a rosette of radical leaves. Ears 
are formed in the axils of the higher leaves but rosettes 
of the second order groxv out from the axils of the lower 
ones. In the second summer the primary and secondary 
rosettes behave in the same way, again producing ears 
above and secondary rosettes below. If the plant grows 
very robustly it may consist of as many as 10-20 single 
rosettes ; if it is a raiuosa every rosette produces branched 
ears, at least on some stalks. Sometimes all the ears 
of the whole plant are branched, in which case it is per- 
fectly easy to see that there is no bud-variation. In its 
second year a single plant may often produce more than 
50 branched ears. 
The culture of 1897 contained a plant which exhibited 
a bud-variation. The seeds of its branched ears, har- 
vested in the first year, had produced 89 individuals that 
flo\vered, of which 36 (40%) were atavists. The plant 
in question consisted, in the autumn of its second year, 
of more than 25 single rosettes which were carefully 
isolated, and planted separately. Only the seven strong- 
est ones survived this operation. I kept them all in their 
pots until a sufficient number of ears were visible and 
then planted them out on two distant beds. On the one 
I planted four rosettes with unbranched ears, on the 
other, three with branched ears. The four former pro- 
duced, together, over 200 strong ears, all unbranched 
with the exception of a single one which bore a small 
lateral branch at its base. The three latter formed both 
unbranched and more or less richly branched inflores- 
cences, but during the whole summer the unbranched 
ears were all cut off before they flowered. The harvest 
from the two beds, gathered and sown separately, gave 
