NOTES ON SILENE MARITIMA, LINN. 77 



VII. 



NOTES ON SILENE MARITIMA, LINN, 



BY THOMAS SCOTT. 



[Eead 20th January, 1884.] 



The caryoi^hyllaceous order of plants offers to the 

 student of vegetable morphology many interesting 

 points for investigation : thus, for instance, in the 

 genus Dianthus, very many species can most readily 

 be crossed ; but in Silene, the most persevering efforts 

 have failed to produce, between extremely close 

 species, a single hybrid.* In the genus Lychnis, the 

 species L. diiD'na, Sibth., has a decidedly unisexual 

 <'haracter, the flowers of the one sex being quite 

 different from those of the other ; while Silene inflata 

 has, according to Axell, three kinds of flowers, — some 

 Avith stamens only, sc^me with pistil only, and some 

 with both.f Very many interesting dichogamous 

 siDecies are to be met with throughout the order. 

 In the following notes on Sile)i(' )n(irifinia, Linn., the 

 result of some observations made during last summer, 

 attention is drawn to another point of interest,— the 

 variability of the number of styles in that species. 



One of the distinguishing characters of the genus 

 Silene, kno^vn to botanists, is that the flowers have 

 three styles. For a good many years past I have 

 observed that in the flowers of aS^. maritinia tliero 

 was a considerable variation from the number of 

 styles characteristic of the genus ; and also that in 

 the various "Floras" I have had the privilege of 

 <'onsulting, no notice is taken of that variation, so 

 far as this species is concerned. In Hooker's Student's 



* Darwin. The Origin of Species, p. 243. 



t Sir John Lubbock. Briti,sJL ^Vihl Floicers in Relation to 

 Insects, p. 4(). 



