Francis E. Lloyd — 130 — Carnivorous Plants 



era reproduces itself through seeds, it is, on the other hand, extraor- 

 dinarily prohfic by means of non-sexual multipHcation making use of 

 brood bodies {D. pygmaea, Goebel) and tubers, of strong axillary buds 

 and especially and above all of budding from the leaves. So frequently 

 and vigorously is the last method used that it would seem to rival 

 that by seed (Behre). 



The seedlings are very small, the cotyledons either escaping from 

 the seed coat (Nitschke, Lubbock, Goebel) or remaining perman- 

 ently embedded therein {D. peltata and D. auriculata, Vickery 1933). 

 The earlier leaves in all cases are rounded (spatulate), indicating this 

 to be the primitive form for this genus (Leavitt, 1903. 1909). The 

 leaf blades are provided with a few glands, both marginal (Nitschke) 

 and on the disc, 5 on each (D. rotundifolia, Leavitt). The radicle 

 is short, provided with root hairs and fugacious. As the shoot develops, 

 adventitious roots put out from the stem, and, as this dies away with 

 the extension of growth, new adventitious roots are produced above. 

 The root system cannot be said to be abundant (Schmid). 



In some species, e.g. D. rotundifolia (Nitschke), the axillary buds 

 below the rosette form at once secondary rosettes, similar to the chief 

 rosette, and as the stem decays they are separated, to propagate the 

 plant. In one group (Ergaleium) tubers are formed. These have been 

 described in their static condition by Diels (1906) and Morrison 

 (1905), and very fully, from the point of view of development, 

 by Vickery, from whose paper (1933) the present account is taken. 

 She worked with the two species D. peltata and D. auriculata which I 

 saw growing about Sydney, N. S. W. When exhumed, the stem below 

 the epigaeal rosette extends downward a matter of a few centimeters, 

 is clothed with scale leaves, and emerges from a small hard rounded 

 tuber clothed with loose membranous envelopes, which when peeled 

 off leave a smooth white tuber. This at the upwardly directed apex 

 bears an "eye", a depressed scaly bud which can develop into a new 

 plant {16 ■ — II, 12). The genesis of this structure is seen in the seed- 

 ling as an axillary shoot bearing normally only scales and growing 

 downwards {16 — 13). This is a "dropper". Reaching a certain 

 depth the end bends upward, and develops into a corm. While this 

 structure normally elongates upward to form a rosette at the surface 

 of the ground, if more or less exposed to light it may produce at once a 

 partial or complete rosette of normal leaves. Such leaves may arise 

 even from the extending dropper instead of scale leaves. An old tuber, 

 as it becomes exhausted, is usually replaced by another produced 

 laterally on the end of the dropper axis close to it. In Australia es- 

 pecially this form of reproduction is of common occurrence. 



The underground tubers, as Goebel has pointed out, are doubtless 

 important as storage reserves of food and water which can tide the 

 plant over during a season when the rosette of leaves disappears. Some 

 of the Australian species have strong coloring matter in their tissues, 

 as is evident from the staining of herbarium sheets on drying. It con- 

 tains two substances, a red one CuHsOs, and a yellow C11H8O4, the 

 latter in only small amounts. Rennie (1893) had shown "that the 

 Os-compound formed a triacetate and was probably a trihydroxy- 

 methylnaphthaquinone, whereas the 04-compound gave a diacetate 



