BOTANICAL NOTES. 229 



to give some interesting facts in due course. The ancientB believed that 

 plants and trees have instinct and vegetable souls, and looked upon them as 

 animals ! However, be tbat as it may, there is no doubt that the floral 

 world has its lusus naturae like aDimals, as will be perceptible in the specimen 

 of the green flower of the Zinnia panciflora herewith forwarded, obtained 

 from my bungalow compound from among many hundred plants growing 

 wild, whose corollas are of different delightful hues. 



The plant from which this individual is obtained is fac simile to the others, 

 except in the flower, and that its growth is stunted. The uncommon colour — 

 green — I venture to say, is doubtless attributable to some chemical change 

 which has taken place in the internal arrangement of this only plant from 

 among a number of others. Science teaches us that the leaves of trees and 

 grass, being inclined to be more dark than white, have a greater tendency to 

 absorb than to rtflect the solar rays. For instance, the grass and leaves are 

 green, but they absorb all but the green rays. In Professor Henfrey's 

 Botany, 2nd Edition, revised by Dr. Masters, we are told that "the 

 various tints of colour are produced either by the interposition of colourless 

 cells between those containing coloured juices, or by the superposition of 

 cells with different colouring matter one over the other. Then how comes 

 this one plant to be affected more than all the others which are contiguouss 

 to it? 



Tne most striking feature in this phenomenon I wish to bring to notice 

 is the abnormal evolution of the corolla having leafy shoots or miniature 

 plants 2 inches high, from whence another flower-bud is shooting — an 

 unheard of freak, I think, in this genus ! The Honorary Secretary of this 

 section will, I am sure, be glad to explain to us the cause of this meta- 

 morphosis, which will be a very interesting lesson to florists who are not 

 versed in tera f ology. 



There are other green flowers on the same plant, but at present without 

 any hafy shoots besides the extracdinary one now sent. 



F. E. 



NOTE ON THE ABOVE, 

 By Surgeon K, R. Kirtikar. 



Me. Rose's specimen of Zinnia pauciflora is an instance of prolification 

 or proliferation, which means the production of one organ by another of 

 a different kind, as that of cup-like appendages by leaves and of branches 

 by flowers or even fruits. For an illustiation of this sort of monstrous 

 development, the reader is referred to figures 650 and 774 in Bentley's 

 Botany at pages 286 and 344 respectively (4th Ed.). In the former is 

 an instance of a flower of the Rose showing the axis prolonged beyond the 

 flower and bearing true leaves ; in the latter a monstrous Pear has its axis 

 prolonged bejond the fruit and similarly bearing true leaves. In the 

 5th Edition of Lindley's Elements of Botany at p. 62, there is an illustra- 

 tion of the flowers of Epacris imprma changing into branches. 



