400 Mr. Bowman on the Parasitical Connection 



which I believe to be new to botanists, I venture to lay them be- 

 fore the Linnean Society. 



I regret that my attempts to investigate the germination of 

 the seeds and the character of the cotyledons have not yet been 

 fully satisfactory. The two last seasons I sowed the seeds be- 

 tween dead leaves, in pots filled with the soil in which the plant 

 grows, and placed them in its native situation : but in both in- 

 stances they failed to germinate ; at least they still remain in- 

 active. Neither have I been able, by dissection, to trace any 

 division of the cotyledons. However, in one of my attempts to 

 ascertain the parasitical connection of the plant, I detected among 

 the mass of roots, when cleared from the soil, what proved on 

 examination to be a minute embryo. This I have represented, 

 both of the natural size and also in two positions highly mag- 

 nified, at Tab. XXII. Fig. 1. a, b, c. Though the cotyledons 



between our Welsh plant, and that figured in English Botany, tab. 50, and the de- 

 scription in English Flora, vol. 3. p. 128 ; to which I may add, that all the specimens 

 which have afforded the materials of the present paper, have the upper lip of the co- 

 rolla entire, or very slightly notched ; while in the authorities just quoted, it is repre- 

 sented as deeply cloven. In Curtis's figure (British Entomology, vol. 4. tab. l60) it is 

 undivided. The height of the flowering stems, in favourable situations, is even more 

 gigantic than I have stated in Loudon's ikfo^a2ine, being sometimes 15 or even 18 

 inches, bearing from 50 to 60 flowers ; on one I counted 63. The subterranean stems 

 are often from 2 to 3 feet long, surrounded at intervals of 5 or 6 inches by thick 

 irregular whorls of cylindrical, often forked branches, closely beset with scales ; and 

 it is often in these parts so swollen and distorted, that it can with difficulty be traced 

 through the labyrinth. Its usual habit is horizontal, producing at the upper whorls, 

 1, 2, or 3 flowering branches, which are the only parts that ever emerge into day ; and 

 it sometimes happens, that the whorls which bear them one season throw up none the 

 next, and vice versa. New branches are added to the subterranean stems every season, 

 and the extremities of the old ones are lengthened out by fresh shoots, both being 

 clothed with a delicately white and succulent herbage, which is permanent and never 

 renewed. Tab. XXII. Fig. 2. is decisive as to their perennial character, the smaller 

 scales just above the crown of the root (o) being evidently those of the embryo plant. 



unfortunately 



