8T8 Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Indimdual, 



the other, or they both spring from a common mother-stem. 

 In the first case^ the female flower usually belongs to the earlier, 

 the male to the later (subordinate) generation ; the male flower- 

 shoot springing from the female*, as e.y. in Euphorbia, Ricinus 

 and Poterium, in which the female flower terminates the main 

 axis, and the male occurs as a lateral shoot f. In Buxus the 

 female flower occurs as the second, the male as the third axis ; 

 in many species of Phyllanthus (e. g. Ph, niruri), the female as 

 the third, the male as the fourth ; in Xylophylla, the female (on 

 the margins of the spurious leaves) as the fourth, the male 

 arising from the bracts of the female flower (as in Phyllanthus) 

 as the fifth. In Momordica, Ecbalium, Cephalanthera, and some 

 other Cucurbit acea, the female flower, placed in the axils of the 

 foliaceous leaves of the main- stem, belongs to the third axis, and 

 the male to the fourth ; for the third axis, which here arises 

 from the base of the peduncle of the female flower as main axis 

 of the racemose male inflorescence, is a superior leaf-shoot. In 

 the other cases, — in which the succession of shoots, in order to 

 arrive at the two kinds of flowers, separates into two coordinate 

 lines, — both kinds of flowers may appear either immediately in 

 the first generation after this separation, or, since here again 

 preparatoiy generations are intercalated, in a later one. Further, 

 the number of the generations (axes) in the two lines arising 

 from the division, may be either equal or unequal. A few ex- 

 amples may serve to explain the manifold cases which thus 

 occur. In Musa, Myriophyllum and Sagittaria, the coordinate 

 male and female flowers appear in the first generation after the 

 separation, and in the whole as a second system of axes. Here 

 the female flowers stand in the lower, the male in the upper 

 part of the spicate or racemose inflorescence. The contrary 

 holds true of Cucurbita and the monoecious Bryonice J ; for here 



other. The second case occurs in Agalmopsis (according to Sars), where 

 partly female (seminal vesiclea) aad partly male individuals grow out of 

 the same main- stem. 



* The opposite case seems to occur very rarely or not at all. A mon- 

 strosity, which for some reasons might be adduced here, is found in Larix 

 JLuropcea and Picea alba, in which transitions of the amentaceous male 

 flowers into female cones occur, where the fruit-scales are emitted from the 

 axils of stamens which are often only slightly abnormal. 



t As in all the examples adduced, the unessential aggrandizement of 

 the inflorescence must be disregarded, which occurs in Ricinus and Pote- 

 rium in the form of lateral female flowers emitted beneath the terminal 

 female flower. 



X Bryonia has apparently axillary racemes ; but a more careful investi- 

 gation shows that they do not spring immediately out of the axil of the 

 foliaceous leaf, but (as secondary branches) out of the peduncle of a single 

 flower standing directly in the axil of the leaf which exactly corresponds to 

 the flower in Cucurbita. 



