Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. S77 



the manifold relations under which sexual division of generation 

 occurs in plants. » nodfiaianc na ji'/ «ljiiui<iii^fll 



Dioecious relations may ocewr without alternation tif^'gi^tiyt^i 

 tion when, in fact, the tiower has a terminal inflorescence and 

 no branches, or only unessential ones, — when, therefore, as it 

 is usually expressed, it is " uniaxial,^' as e. g. in Rubus Cha- 

 moimorus, Lf/c/mis, and Viscum. Much more frequently, how- 

 ever, division of the sexes occurs in plants which at the same 

 time have a cyclical succ( ssion of shoots (alternation of genera- 

 tion), — a succession which each of the two heterogeneous stocks 

 passes through independently, and not ^\\?iy^ pari passu. This 

 is a circumstance which must not be neglected in considering 

 the differences of habitus in male and female flowers. Thus, in 

 Mercurialis the female plant bears flowers even on the second 

 axis ; in the male plant, however, — if I do not misunderstand 

 the inflorescence (a spike composed of small glomerules), — this 

 first occurs on the third. In Cai^ex dioica, vice versa, the male 

 plant flowers in the second line and the female in the third*. 

 In other dioecious plants, on the other hand, the male and female 

 flowers appear in the corresponding generation : e.g. in the 

 second, Btratiotes, Empetrum, and Taxus; in the third. Saline, 

 Populus, Myrica, Cannabis ; in the fourth, Phcenix. In Hemp, 

 the extremely heterogeneous appearance of the inflorescence of 

 the male and female plants does not depend upon a division of 

 the flowers of the two sexes among difl'erent axes, but upon the 

 production of numerous unessential peduncles in the male inflo- 

 rescence f. 



Monoecism necessarily presupposes a succession of shoots 

 (alternation of generation) ; in the simplest case at least for one 

 of the two sexes, as both cannot be united in the same terminal 

 flower; but, vice versd, both may easily appear in determinate 

 (equal or unequal) degrees of ramification. The most important 

 circumstance to be considered in monoecious relations, consists 

 in both the sexes [i. e. the shoots which bear them) occurring 

 either subordinately or coordinately J, for one either arises out of 



* The second axis, which is a complete dwarf or a mere bristly spine, 

 bears the so-called ' urceolus/ in the axil of which the female flower is 

 placed, as the third member of the succession of generations. 



t The female flowers are placed at the sides of the primary branches 

 as branches of the second degree. In the same place where one single 

 flower occurs in the female plant, afurcately ramified inflorescence isfoimd 

 in the male, produced by branching out of the two bracts of the original 

 flower. 



X Both these cases doubtless occur in the animal kingdom ; the first 

 probably in Alcyonella, where the stock is said to be composed partly of 

 males and partly of females. As the stock is here formed by individuals 

 continually shooting out of each other, one sex must shoot out of the 



