346 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [November 



of the early papers dealing with the "male flowers" of conifers, and 

 to which we are indebted for part of the following statement regard- 

 ing this early interpretation of the staminate strobilus of Taxus. 



Linnaeus (16) regarded the entire strobilus as a single flower, 

 with the stamens in a cylinder, the perianth lacking and replaced 

 by bud scales. Jussieu (13) held that the strobilus was a monadel- 

 phous flower; while Lindley (15) considered the strobilus as a true 

 cone with naked monadelphous flowers, each sporophyll repre- 

 senting a flower. Richard (19) went still farther, with the rather 

 unique view that there were 5-8 flowers under each scale to which 

 the stalk of the flower is attached on the underside. According to 

 this view the pollen sac represented a "flower," and he had a similar 

 interpretation for the sporophylls of Thuja and Juniperus. Zuc- 

 carini (28), regarding the reproductive structures as modified 

 portions of the stem, comparable with the phylloclads of Phyllo- 

 dadus, described the anther of Taxus as 7-8-lobed around the tip 

 of a central column. He considered that Taxus has the most 

 complete male flower in conifers, in other forms the anther folds 

 growing on only one side of the central column, the other side 

 growing out into a scale. Von Mohl opposes the idea of the stem 

 character of the "flower" of conifers, and objects to the view that 

 the "anthers" of other conifers have been derived from such a 

 structure as that of Taxus, because "we have yet no certain data 

 with which we can determine with certainty whether the anther of 

 Taxus arises from one leaf or from a whorl of leaves." 



As compared with our present ideas these early views are rather 

 strange, having largely only a historical interest, with very little 

 hearing on the real morphology of the structures concerned. Con- 

 siderably later Strasburger (22) made some observations on T. 

 baccata, describing the spiral arrangement of the scales of the 

 strobilus and the grosser features of the development of the sporo- 

 phylls. He held that the peltate stamen of Taxus represents the 

 "extreme form of stamen," and found that it begins as a rounded 

 knob about the first of August, becomes lobed by lateral swellings 

 due to internal growth, and that pollen mother cells form in these 

 lateral swellings and produce pollen by tetrad divisions. He also 

 describes the pollen region as separated from the epidermis by two 



