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recurvous and yellow tinged at the base. Looked at super- 

 ficially, the abnormal flowers show the same construction; in 

 fact, however, they possess, besides the sepals and petals, 

 tivo dark red staminodes, and two lips of almost the same 

 shape placed at right angles with the other staminodes. On 

 the other hand the stamen is wanting and the style is fili- 

 form (fig. 6a). Two explanations of this deviation seem ad- 

 missible, viz., that the stamen is altogether suppresssed and one 

 of the alae, say y, transformed into a labellnm, or that the 

 stamen has gone through this transformation and one of the 

 alae is lost 1 '. 



The 16 flowers in alcohol show that the second supposition 

 is the right one for the following reason: — 



The stamen of Canna is placed just opposite the outer petal 

 (P 1 ). In 14 of our 16 flowers I found in that place a staminode 

 imitating the shape l ) of the labellnm and hardly to be dis- 

 tinguished from it. 



There are two alae, one on the right and one on the left 

 side of the staminode, embracing both labellum and staminode. 



In two of the 14 flowers there are 3 alae, one on the left 

 and two on the right hand side of the staminode. In both 

 cases there is a rudiment of an anther to be seen on the right 

 side of the staminode. 



The two remaining flowers show the stamen petaloid only 

 on the left side whereas the right side has developed to the 

 shape of an anther. There are three alae, one left and two right 

 ones. One of these, that adjoining the stamen, is strongly deve- 

 loped and is labellum-like. 



It appears from the above facts that the second labellum is 

 to be considered as the transformed stamen and that conse- 

 quently in the flowers with two labella one of the alae has 

 been suppressed. The suppressed ala is y, not a because y is 

 nearer the stamen than a. Moreover it should be noticed that 

 in a normal flower y covers both stamen and « and therefore 



4) No use could of course be made of the yellow colour at the base. 



