A Botanical and Economic Study. 85 



Flower. — The style is long, reaching beyond the tip of the 

 enclosing husks. It is double morphologically. Two fibro- 

 vascular bundles, greatly reduced, run its length. The style 

 of Zca agrees with the styles of grasses in general. The 

 entire surface of the filamentous style is covered with com- 

 pound hairs, which catch and hold the smooth pollen grains. 



The round, smooth pollen grains (Fig. 4, Plate XV) are pro 

 duced in great abundance, as many as 2500 being formed in a 

 single anther. " Each panicle of male flowers [the tassel] was 

 found by careful estimates to contain about 7200 stamens, so 

 that the number of pollen grains produced by each plant is 

 18,000,000. Allowing two ears of 1000 kernels to each plant, 

 there are still 9000 pollen grains for every ovule to be ferti- 

 lized." 1 



The epidermal layer of the grain is simple, with long 

 diameter anticlinal. The internal cells contain starch and 

 protein granules. 2 The starch granules closely aggregated 

 are polygonal, with extremely delicate circular and radial 

 markings. In size and general appearance, they are inter- 

 mediate between the starches of wheat and rice. They are 

 from .0002 to .0012 of an inch in diameter. 3 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



1. Potonie, H., Entwickelung der Leitbundel Anastomosien in den 



Laubblattern von Zea Mays. Ber. D. B. G., IV, 

 no. 



2. Rezbisch, Ueber Mais-Kolben. Sitzungsb. d. nat. Gesellsch. Isis, 



1875. 29- 



3. Delbri'ick, M., Des Gehalt des Maises an Starke, Centralblatt fur 



Agric. Chemie, 1880, 155. Botanische Jahresbericht, 

 1879, 384. 



4. Poisson, Sur la coloration des grains de Mais, Compt. Rend. Assoc, 



fr. p. l'avanc. d. Sc. Paris, 1878, 688. 



5. Kreusler, Beobachtungen iiber das Wachsthum der Maispflanze. 



Landwirthschaftliche Jahresbericht. N. in Thiel. 

 1877. 759. 787; 1879, 517, 617. 



1 American Naturalist, xv, 18S1, iooo. 



= Simmonds, P. L., Tropical Agriculture, 299 ; Meyer. Arthur, Archiv. der Pharm., 

 221, 912. 



s Bell, James, The Chemistry of Foods, II, 173, London, 1891. 



