Conopholis aincricana. g 



It will be noticed that from all of these tubercles spring 

 flower stalks in various stages of development. The larger 

 tubercles, such as are figured in Plate I, are almost completely- 

 covered with such stalks. Curiously enough, however, there 

 are few transition stages between the adult stalks and the very 

 numerous young buds. The material was gathered near the 

 close of the flowering period. Therefore, it may be that the.se 

 buds remain dormant until the next year. It .seems quite as 

 probable however, that, like other parasites, they are capable 

 of very rapid growth, and that transition stages are rarely 

 found because the transformation takes place rapidly. 



The buds are protected by the scale leaves, which, in the 

 young state, are rather fleshy than membranous. The tubercle 

 itself is covered with a thick, coarse, porous, dark -brown 

 "bark," which scarcely holds together the innumerable gran- 

 ules of sclerenchyma which make up the great mass ol the 

 excrescence. Plates II and III, which are photographs of a 

 tubercle and the host oak root cut through the middle, show 

 quite clearly the enormous quantity of sclerenchyma in such a 

 growth. Plate V, P"ig. 5, is a drawing of a cross section 

 through one of these patches. It will be noticed that it 

 resembles markedly sclerenchyma groups, which are normally 

 developed in the cortex of the oak, and arc, indeed, character- 

 istic of it. 



These photographs do not show what was particularly 

 striking in the material itself, namely, that wherever a flower 

 stalk had been, there were left behind large masses of scleren- 

 chyma embedded in dead cellular tissue. 



Plates II and III alike show three large nodules, the centres 

 of which are undoubtedly oak, much more compact and with 

 fewer groups of sclerenchyma than the others. The lower 

 nodule of Plate II indicates, perhaps, how the oak wood grad- 

 ually became isolated from the surrounding wood, thus form- 

 ing apparently comparatively unattached centres. The middle 

 one of these three large nodules dropped from the rest, plainly 



