The Ohio iJSCcituralist, 



PUBLISHED BY 



The Biological Club of the Ohio Slate Universiiy, 

 Volume VII. JANUARY. 1907. No. 3. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SCHAFFNER — Synapsis and Synizesis 41 



Smith— Weather and Crop Yield 48 



McCi.EEEY— Stellate Hairs and Peltate Scales of Ohio Plants 51 



Mark— Color of Ohio Flowers 57 



CoNDiT— Winter Key to the Ohio Species of Euonymus 60 



Detmers— Additions to the Ohio Flora for 1905-6 61 



Claassen— An Interesting Boulder of Cuyahoga County 61 



Metcalf— Meeting of the Biological Club 62 



SYNAPSIS AND SYNIZESIS * 



John H. Schaffner. 



The term, synapsis, has, in recent 3'ears, gained wide cur- 

 rency among cytologists as a designation for various real and 

 hypothetical processes supposed to take place in the early stages 

 "of the reduction division. At the present time cytological liter- 

 ature abounds with contradictory accounts of various cell 

 activities supposed to be normal, until one is not only amused 

 but utterly confused. In order to give the word, "synapsis", a 

 more definite meaning, McClungf has proposed the following 

 definitions which it might be well for plant cytologists to consider. 

 "By synapsis I mean the fusion of simple chromosomes into mul- 

 tiple ones, usually of a bivalent value, according to the idea of 

 Moore, who proposed the term. I would suggest that in order 

 to avoid the lamentable confusion that has resulted from the 

 misuse of this designation that a new descriptive word be applied 

 to the contraction of the nucleus in which the chromatin is 

 found massed at one side of the vesicle, without regard to whether 

 it is a normal phenomenon or not. To carry this idea I shall 

 call this stage the "synizesis of the chromatin." "Synizesis" — ■ 

 the unilateral or central contraction of the chromatin in ,the nu- 

 cleus" during the prophase of the first spermatocyte. A term pro- 

 posed to avoid the misuse of the word 'synapsis". 



Evidently this is a move in the right direction but the defi- 

 nition of synizesis as given above must be extended to include 



* Contributions from the Botanical Laboratory of the Ohio State 

 University XXVIII. 



tMcCLUNG, C. E. The Chromosome Complex of Orthopteran Sper- 

 matocytes. Biol. Bull. 9:30^340, 1905. 



