OXALIS IN CEYLON. 51 



In the Journal of Botany, LVI., p. 122, M. J. Godfrey, 

 reviewing Sommier and Galto's Flora Melitensis Nova, makes 

 the following comment : " Another interesting plant isOxalis 

 cernua, a trimorphic species from the Cape of Good Hope, of 

 which only the short-styled form grows in Malta. It was 

 first mentioned by Giacmto in 1806 in a list of plants in the 

 Malta Botanical Gardens. To such an extent has it spread that 

 the fields are yellow with it, as fields at home sometimes are 

 with charlock, and it is found everywhere, on the walls, by the 

 road-sides, and in such abundance that it far exceeds all the 

 other flowers together. The extraordinary thing is that all 

 this immense profusion of flowers results in no production of 

 capsules, the other forms capable of fertiHzing the ovary being 

 absent. The authors of the Flora, one of whom has lived in 

 Malta all his life, state that they have never seen it in fruit. 

 It appears, however, that recently it has been found at Naples 

 and Palermo with mature seeds, and it has been suggested 

 that possibly, after its long isolation, it has acquired the 

 faculty of being fertilized by pollen of the same form. This 

 has not occurred at Malta, where it has been much longer 

 established, and it would seem more probable that one of the 

 other forms may have been cultivated in gardens at Naples 

 and Palermo, or that it may have been fertihzed from some 

 other garden species. A form with double flowers is very 

 abundant in Malta and Lampedusa, which furnishes confirma- 

 tion of Darwin's theory that steriUty is the excitmg cause of 

 double flowers. It is curious that such an immense amount 

 of energy should be wasted in the production of useless flowers. 

 One would have thought they would tend to disappear when 

 the method of propagation became purely vegetative, i.e., by 

 the bulbils on the roots." 



Though double flowers have not been obsei'ved on either 

 Oxalis latifolia or 0. corymbosa in Ceylon, they present in other 

 respects an exact parallel to 0. cemui in Malta. Neither has 

 ever been found to bear capsules, but both flower freely, and 

 0. corymbosa has spread all over the up-country districts, 

 while 0. latifolia promises to be equally abundant at the 

 highest elevations. 



