85 



begin to grow very much faster than their sisters do, they soon 

 draw all the available food thus starving the latter, while in 

 case no fertilisation occurs all the flowers answer the impulse 

 of growth, so that no one comes so much in the ascendency to 

 the others as to appropriate all or nearly all the food. 



Therefore, in looking for recently fertilised Gnetum Gnemon 

 one has to take home the apparenty unfertilised inflorescences 

 with some very few flowers a little larger than the others. 

 Only in very fortunate cases we may obtain inflorescences 

 where so many flowers are fertilised as in that of fig. 6. PI. II. 

 This one was obtained from a female tree whose branches in- 

 tertwined with those of a male tree. Generally an inflorescence 

 of this appearance would prove to be unfertilised. As we see 

 from the small figure at the left of fig. 6, four of the seven 

 flowers of one internode were here fertilised. This figure 6 

 shows also how in the axillae of the wedgeshaped bracts single 

 flowers may occupy the place usually taken by spikes. Flowers 

 of the size of the larger ones in fig. 6 will generally prove to 

 have formed their proembryo's allready so that the study of 

 the fertilisation proper has to take place at material inter- 

 mediate between stages like fig. 4 and such as those of fig. 6. 



The scarcety of fertilised trees in nature makes it exceedingly 

 diflicult to obtain material of these stages in sufficient quan- 

 tity, I am therefore trying to obtain it by means of artificial 

 pollination. The results which I hope to obtain therewith will 

 form the subject of a future paper. Of stages older than that 

 sketched in fig. 6 little need be said; but few fruits reach 

 maturity; in every inflorescence, generally but one or two be- 

 come entirely ripe (see fig. 5 and 7. PI. II). The fruits which 

 in fig. 6 are green yet, will partly be yellow partly be red 

 on stages like fig. 5 while those of the size of fig. 7 have a 

 beautifull carmin-red colour. A fruit like the one in fig. 7 will 

 soon drop and then prove to contain a large quantity of en- 

 dosperm with a larger or smaller number of proembryo's, the 

 embryo's proper developping during germination of the seed. 

 In stages like the larger fruits of fig. 6 the prothallium is 



