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203 



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NOTES ON INFLORESCENCE. 



HAVING for some years paid considerable atten- 

 tion to the study of Inflorescence, I cannot but 

 be pleased to find it recommended to your readers, 

 as it is in your July number. It is indeed to be 

 regretted that ' ' an immense amount of mischief 

 has been wrought to true botany by the ambiguous, 

 loose, and inaccurate use of terms." To begin with 

 the term axillary, which has been applied alike to 

 the flowers of the periwinkle and the pimpernel. 

 The resemblance between the flower arrangement 

 of these two plants is apparent — the difference is 



real. Flowers of the pimpernel appear in the axils 

 of opposite leaves and are themselves opposite. 

 Nobody has ever seen two flowers opposite each 

 other in the periwinkle. Its leaves are opposite, 

 its flowers are unilateral, as those of the forget- 

 me-not. When it happens, as it sometimes does, 

 that a solitary leaf appears in connection with a 

 flower, the flower is opposite the leaf, not axillary to 

 it. The best botanists affirm that when a flower is 

 opposite a leaf it is truly terminal. Then as to the 

 corymb and the umbel being forms of indefinite 

 inflorescence. I suppose the best example of a 

 corymb is to be found in the pear, which regularly has 

 a terminal flower. Such a flower is also to be found 

 in the umbel of the carrot, and many other plants of 

 the same order, which ought no longer to be called 

 Umbelliferrc, if we are to restrict the term umbel to 

 those cases in which it is indefinite, as in the cowslip 



and polyanthus. The spike of agrimony is termi- 

 nated by a flower which expands before that next 

 below it. The staminate flowers of Mercurialis 

 perennis are in a pendulous spike with a flower at 

 the end, which is the first to open. The spike of 

 plantago is indefinite. Thus we find several words 

 used in describing forms of inflorescence in a sense as 

 vague as that of panicle. It is to be desired that the 

 use of the term panicle should be discontinued by 

 those who regard it as a form of indefinite inflores- 

 cence. It is not easy to say why there should be a 

 special name for a compound raceme, as there is not 

 for a compound umbel. Indeed there are few instances 

 in which such a name would be applicable. Perhaps 

 one may be found in Yucca, where the flowers are 

 large and numerous enough to attract attention. The 

 inflorescence of the cauliflower might be also called a 

 panicle, in the same sense, but it is not often. An 

 abnormal form of inflorescence in a plantain affords 

 another instance. But in almost, if not quite every 

 instance in which British botanists mention a panicle, 

 it is in the sense in which I have ventured to describe 

 it in my " First Catechism of Botany" as a " compound 

 corymb or raceme in which the branches of the 

 peduncle branch again as in the London pride or the 

 great broad-leaved saxifrage." Whoever will examine 

 either of these plants in flower, may find a flower 

 crowning the peduncle and one at the end of every 

 branch, as well as on the tertiary branches. It is 

 likewise in the lilac of which Professor Lindley 

 describes the inflorescence as a panicle, so that in these 

 familiar instances, the panicle is as truly a form of 

 definite inflorescence as is the forked panicle of 

 Stellaria. It would indeed be better in using such 

 terms as corymb, spike, and umbel, which were in- 

 vented and defined before the difference between 

 definite and indefinite inflorescence was made out, 

 to add the adjective definite or indefinite, so as to 

 say, for instance, that flowers of the cowslirj are in an 

 indefinite simple umbel, those of the carrot in a 



compound definite umbel. JOHN GlBBS. 



