412 



The Ohio Journal of Science [Vol. XIX, No. 7, 



Omitting the tree with the reversed branches, the remaining 

 65 individuals may be arranged to indicate roughly the degree 

 of femaleness or maleness as follows: 



In the case of number 14, we have an example of tlie reversal 

 of the sex condition in the vegetative tissues of a bud, which 

 is more fundamental than the dimorphic hereditary expression 

 which appears when two catkins of opposite nature are produced 

 side by side, although the cause may be the same in either case. 

 The main trunk with the male condition established, or at least 

 with a strong tendency toward producing staminate catkins, 

 suddenly gives off a bud with the opposite tendency which 

 continues in scores of secondary buds and branches. The 

 change from staminate to carpellate condition was, however, 

 not complete. The reversal in sexual nature was not able to 

 repress the male condition entirely, and so there are here and 

 there catkins which have the staminate nature — an expression 

 of maleness in the ultimate shoot, although the prevailing 

 tendency of the entire branch is female. The seeds of the fruit 

 are perfectly viable and little trees are being grown from it 

 at the present time. 



There could be no more striking example of the reversal of 

 sex in a vegetative tissue and the prevailingly consistent 

 behavior of its parent tissue than is shown in this tree. The 

 process, however, can be no different, fundamentally, than 

 what goes on in the vegetative tissues of monecious and 

 bisporangiate flowers generally; but the case is interesting 

 because of its bearing on diecism, and because of its persistence 

 in the given branch. There is something in this derived veg- 

 etative tissue, derived apparently from male tissue, which 

 compels female expression generally but permits a reversal to 

 the male condition again occasionally. This ''something" has 

 nothing to do directly with the fundamental factors of male 



