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TERATOLOGY OF SCROPHULARIA CALIFORNICA. 



By Willis L. Jepson. 



Abnormal individuals among plants in a state of nature, as is 

 well known, are comparatively infrequent. They are, indeed, exceed- 

 ingly rare when compared with the total number of normal plants of 

 the species, and teratological flowers or fruits are in most cases solitary 

 on the individual. Rarely does it occur that the examples are nu- 

 merous. In the case about to be described, however, the abnormal 

 flowers observed were found in great numbers, there being dozens of 

 plants and tens of thousands of flowers. Moreover, this species, 

 Scrophularia Cdlifornica Cham., occurs in the same spot year after 

 year, and continues to develop in its season monstrous inflorescences. 



The exact locality, where these plants were observed^ is a little 

 shelf on the hillside in the rear of the buildings of the University of 

 California. They occupy (almost exclusive of other species) a space 

 fifty by twenty yards and grow three to six feet in height. A great 

 many of the individuals growing here are perfect, but nnxed in with 

 them are the ones to be considered. 



In the seasons of 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898, abnormal plants 

 abounded. In the season of 1898 doubtless one-fourth the indi- 

 viduals came under this category. 



The inflorescence, as is well known, is a more or less pyramidal pan- 

 icle, which is, when produced by thrifty plants, one to two feet long. 

 In some cases all the flowers of the panicle were replaced by leafy 

 branches. In other cases all the flowers were abnormal but none 

 of the parts had become foliaceous or scarcely so. Then, again, 

 there were inflorescences in which but a few flowers were abnormal, 

 and many in which abnormal flowers and flowers changed into leafy 

 shoots were intermixed. 



A typical abnormal flower may be described as follows: Calyx 

 chorisepalous with linear or obovate lobes — Fig. 3, s — (instead of 

 synsepalous with ovate lobes as in the normal flower); corolla regular 

 or nearly so — Fig. 3, c — (the normal corolla is bilabiate with the 

 upper lip erect and much longer than the lower, the middle of which 



Contributions from the Botanical Laboratories of the University of 

 California, No. 8. 



