THE VASCULAR ANATOMY OF PIPER METHYSTICUM 

 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE HULL BOTANICAL LABORATORY 218 



Rachel E. Hoffstadt 

 (WITH TWENTY-THREE FIGURES) BOTAI" 



Historical 



Linnaeus placed the Piperaceae in the monocotyledons among 

 the Aroidaceae; Jussieu held that they were near the Urticaceae; 

 Kunth (8) and Blume ranked them with the monocotyledons. 

 De Candolle (4), however, following Jussieu, stated that the 

 embryo characters indicated their dicotyledonous character. 

 Engler and Prantl (5) put the tribe Piperales among the lower 

 Archichlamydeae. Included in it are 4 families: Saururaceae, 

 Piperaceae, Chloranthaceae, and Lacistemaceae. The genus 

 Piper contains over 1,000 species. Miquel (10) separates 7 

 species from the original classification on the basis of the presence 

 or absence of his so-called "stipula oppositifolia " and persistence 

 of the petiole. Among these is Piper methysticum Forst., which he 

 calls Macro pi per methysticum. Engler and Prantl (5), using 

 as a basis of their classification of these two genera the method of 

 branching in the floral regions, retain the name of Forster. 



Piperaceae have attracted much attention because of their 

 anomalies, both in anatomical and reproductive features. The 

 former have been described in many species. Miquel (10) 

 asserted that the internode of the stem ends blindly in the petiole, 

 and the next internode develops from a bud between the petiole 

 and the end of the foregoing node. He stated also that there are 

 alternate, opposite, and whorled leaves on the same branch. The 

 latter he concluded were atrophies, and the number of internodes 

 which would have been produced would have been the same num- 

 ber as the whorls of leaves. Sanio (ii) described in detail the 

 I. structure and the course of the bundles in the stem of Peperomia 

 ^j blanda. Schmitz (12) verified the work of Sanio in Peperomia. 

 t , He concluded that the peripheral bundles in Piper were joined at 

 SO 115I [Botanical Gazette, vol. 62 



