178 University of Calif ornia Puhlications in Botany [Vol. 5 



that have developed late in the season at the base of maturing 

 seed capsules. The majority of these buds, and numbers of them 

 may be formed, die and fall but in certain cases -1 to 10 may de- 

 velop into weak, stunted, at times abnormal, flowers. The appear- 

 ance of these flowers is rather striking, rising as they do hardly 

 above the tips of the brown and almost mature seed capsules about 

 them, with the corolla tube so shortened that the stigma stands 

 3 to 4 mm. above the flattened limb which limb is much reduced, 

 flaccid and early withering. This situation very probably de- 

 pends upon the phj'siological balance between the metabolic ac- 

 tivities which look to the production of flowers and those which 

 have to do with the maturing of the seed formed from these 

 flowers. Some data are at hand which seem to show that on a 

 given flowering shoot of the indeterminate type the size of the 

 flowers which it bears is, roughly speaking, inversely propor- 

 tional to the number of seed capsules which are allowed to 

 mature. The agricultural'practice of "topping the bald sucker" 

 and "suckering" tobacco plants is merely an efi'ort, and ap- 

 parently an eff^ective one to restrict the growth and especially 

 the metabolic activities of the plant body to the vegetative struc- 

 tures as opposed to those strictly reproductive. The reactions 

 normally proceeding in one direction are forcibly reversed or 

 perhaps reaction products are not allowed to accumulate in the 

 usual regions and the metabolic reactions reach a point of equil- 

 ibrium at a later period and in another part of the plant. Simi- 

 larly what is recognized as a periodicity in the production of 

 flowers means the concentration of the products of metabolic ac- 

 tivity in different regions at different times to accomplish special 

 and individual results. The conditions, in the ease of a large old 

 infloresence maturing seed, are not such as to allow of the pro- 

 duction of normal, vigorous flowers — they are out of place and 

 the constructive materials for their proper development are not 

 present in sufficient quantity. Phenomena, as closely correlated 

 as these, so dependent upon broad, general physiological states 

 common to all plants are not ordinarily thought -of as "unit- 

 characters," and, yet, on the other hand, they might seem to be 

 the fundamental, truly indivisible "unit-characters" on the basis 

 of which our experimental mingling of less fundamental, heretible 



