Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 365 



the Oak, Beech and Poplar. A similar oscillation between infe- 

 rior-leaf formation and foliaceous-leaf formation, keeping pace 

 with the change of season, is seen in the creeping main-shoot of 

 Adooca, and in the stock of Hepatica nobilis, creeping close to the 

 soil, with its short internodcs, and w^hich in so far deserves its 

 French name {la fille avant la mere) as its flowers, which unfold 

 before the foliage, do not belong to the same individual as the 

 foliage, but are produced laterally as a " daughter generation '' 

 from the axils of the inferior-leaves of the maternal stem *. A 

 similar phsenomenon, only in a higher degree (a rising and fall- 

 ing between foliaceous- and superior-leaf formation), is presented 

 by those plants whose inflorescence ends in a foliaceous coma, as 

 is remarkably the case in the Pine-Apple, and also in the New 

 Holland species of Melaleuca and Callistemon, whose crowded, 

 brush-like inflorescence {i. e. the region covered with superior- 

 leaves and bearing the flowers in the axils of these) returns and 

 forms foliaceous-leaves, and in the following year again attains 

 an inflorescence. 



While every leaf-formation may bring the progress of the 

 metamorphosis on a single shoot to a consummation, it is con- 

 ceivable that one shoot may be allowed to each step for itself 

 alone. Thus, there are shoots which represent inferior-leaf 

 formation alone; e.g. the root-stock of Paris quadrifolia, the 

 tuberiferous branches of the rhizoma of the Potato f; and there 



attained by particular branches, deviating in character from the rest, — the 

 catkins which pass over leaf- formation advancing from the inferior-leaves 

 immediately to the superior-leaves out of whose axils the flowers are 

 emitted. 



* The same obtains in Galanthus nivalis, in which every annual gene- 

 ration consists of one inferior leaf, one foliaceous-leaf with a vagina, and 

 one without a vagina, which follow each other in simple alternation, in a 

 distichous arrangement. The flower, as a branch, is emitted from the axil 

 of the second foliaceous-leaf, while the direct continuation of the shoot re- 

 turns again to inferior-leaf formation. In striking contrast to the extremely 

 simple relations of this plant we find Oxalis tetraphylla and other species 

 of that genus, in which the subterraneous main-stem also presents an alter- 

 nation of inferior-leaf formation and foliaceous-leaf formation, advancing 

 with the change of season, but conjoined with a rare abundance of leaves 

 and a complicated phyllotaxis. The number of the inferior-leaves amounts 

 to several hundreds ; and transverse sections of the bulbs, which last 

 through the winter and are formed by the close approximation of these 

 leaves, form some of the prettiest specimens of phyllotaxis, showing 21-15 

 arrangement through easily computable 8-, 13- and 21 -ranked obhque 

 spirals. The number of the foliaceous-leaves is not so large ; they develope 

 in the summer, and form an 8- to 13-leaved rosette, out of which the axil- 

 lary inflorescences issue, with their long peduncles. 



t In case (as sometimes occurs) the tuber does not pass through this 

 formation and advance to foliaceous-leaf formation. The tuber is the 

 thickened apex of the inferior-leaf shoot. Cf. the figure by Turpin, Mem. 

 du Mus. d'Hist. Nat. t. 19. pi. 2. 



