Jan. 1, 1866.] 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



9 



Fig. 8 is a very interesting example of Marvel of 

 Peru {Mirabilis jalapa), which lias grown in my 

 garden during the last summer. This plant, belongs 

 to the natural order Nyctaginacesc, a tribe in which 

 there is no corolla, but the calyx becomes coloured, 

 and is placed, solitary or clustered, in an involucre 



Whilst at Llanberis during the past summer, I found, 

 in the garden of the hotel where we were staying, a 

 curious flower of Weigelia, very similar in its ab- 

 normal development to a primrose which I described 



Fig. 8. 



of leafy bracts. In the case of the Marvel of Peru, 

 however, no one would suppose, from merely looking 

 at the flower, but that there was a beautiful crimson 

 or yellow or streaked monopetalous corolla placed 

 within an ordinary green calyx of five sepals. 

 Botanists tell us, however, that this corolla is no 

 corolla at all, but a calyx, and that what we supposed 

 to be calyx is only bracts. In the specimen figured, 

 two of these coloured perianths have grown within 

 one pseudo-calyx, showing that the latter organ is 

 really an involucre, and establishing the relationship 

 of this plant with Nyctago and other genera in which 

 the nature of the involucral leaves cannot be mis- 

 taken. Such specimens have been observed before, 

 and been made use of in proving the affinities of 

 Mirabilis. 



I have several times noticed a curious variety of 

 the Common Columbine {Aquilegia vulgaris), which 

 I think comes up the same year after year, but on 

 this point I am not sure. The flower of this variety 

 is entirely destitute of the horn-shaped hollow petals 

 so characteristic of the plant, but their place is taken 

 by a second and often third ring of flat leaves, 

 which are either altered petals or multiplied sepals, 

 and which give the flower very much the appearance 

 of the double form of Love-in-a-mist (Nigella), minus 

 the pectinated involucre. I made no drawing of this 

 variety at the time, but the following outline from 

 memory will serve to explain it sufficiently (Pig. 9). 



a b 



Fig. 9. a. normal ; b. abnormal. 



of Science-Gossip. There was a corolla 

 of the usual shape and size, which contained only 

 one perfect stamen, all the other internal organs 

 being couverted into a short branch, upon the base 

 of which were placed two or three leaflike greenish 

 bracts, and on the summit a second corolla, rather 

 irregular in shape and containing half-developed 

 stamens and pistil. 



The flowers of the double-blossomed Cherry, which 

 are so great an ornament in our gardens in May, 

 always show us some interesting examples of ab- 

 normal development. The duplication of the flower 

 is effected by the conversion of some of the numerous 

 stamens into petals, a considerable number of the sta- 

 mens remaining still unchanged, so that if the pistils 

 were perfect, there would be no reason why the 

 double-blossomed cherry should not always produce 

 fruit. 



If the flowers be examined, however, the pistil 

 will be found to have suffered change, becoming, not 

 a new series of petals, but two little green leaves, 

 folded one within the other, in the centre of the 

 flower. Now and then the pistil remains perfect, 

 and if it happen to be fertilized by the stamens it 

 grows, and we do find occasionally one or two ripe 

 cherries on a tree. Last year I observed on a tree 

 in my own garden, that in very many of the flowers 

 the two little central green leaves had become a 

 regular calyx enclosing a second double-flower. 



The Poet's Narcissus (N~. poeticas), which we in 

 Cheshire call by the pretty name of " Sweet Nancy," 

 is very curious in its manner of duplication. I have 

 many patches of it, some of which are semi-double, 

 being either double ones reverting to single, or 

 single ones becoming double, I know not which ; 

 and in these the way in which the flower becomes 

 double may be well seen. A single flower consists 

 of six leaves united into a tube, around the mouth 

 of which stands the crimson cup-shaped nectary, six 

 stamens being attached to the sides of the tube. 



