lis THE JOURNAL OP BOTANY 



perties, and it may have been at one time used as a condiment, 

 since Mr. Clement Eeid informs me he has found a single fruit in 

 Eoman Silchester. At present we can only regard it as a well- 

 established alien. Now that attention has been called to it, the 

 plant may be found elsewhere in Scotland. The specific name is 

 somewhat misleading, referring, as it does, not to the flower, which 

 is of a purer white, I think, than either temulum or sylvestris, but 

 to the fruits, which as they ripen have a greenish golden hue. 



DOUBLE FLOWERS. 

 By a. R. Horwood. 



In an interesting communication Miss Helen Saunders (p. 62) 

 describes her recent discovery of wild double daffodils, and she 

 would explain them as due to overcrossing, or excessive inter- 

 breeding as we may call it ; but she states that gardeners 

 do not procure them by any uniform plan, nor universally 

 by crossing. It is certainly the case that they are commonest 

 under cultivation. And yet in spite of this and the known 

 neglect by horticulturists of artificial crossing to account for 

 them, she proposes this method as responsible for those found 

 double in a wild state, when a reason lies to hand which is 

 constant under all conditions, viz., the irritation caused by insects, 

 which is common also to many other types of monstrosities or 

 malformations. This agency Miss Saunders dismisses as not 

 reasonable ; but surely a fact may be known without a reason for 

 it '? And so it is that the double flower has been found by repu- 

 table botanists such as Molliard (" C6cidies Florales," Ann. des 

 Sci. Nat. s6r. viii. 1895, p. 67) to be due to mites which set up an 

 irritation, and cause thereby teratological structures. The work 

 of Masters amply illustrates the variety of these monstrosities. 



Peyritsch has shown also that by their means petals become sepals 

 and stamens petals. Is it then unreasonable to say that a double 

 flower with additional petals is due to insect irritation ?, If so, we 

 should have to dismiss then as unhkely the supposition that the 

 fastigiate galls upon trees — with which double flowers are strictly 

 comparable — are due to insects as equally unreasonable. But it is 

 almost a truism to remind anyone that galls are actually produced 

 by certain GecidomyidcB, allied to those that cause double flowers. 

 And just as these galls, as Darwin has remarked [Animals and 

 Plants under Domestication, 1868, p. 283), come remarkably true to 

 character each time, though so different amongst themselves and 

 produced, moreover, by different insects so closely allied, so 

 double flowers initially produced by gall-insects, once brought into 

 existence, come true generation after generation. If one compares 

 a double daffodil with the fastigiate flower-like gall or " helix" of 

 the "rose" willow, where is the difference in the nature of the 

 work done ? True, there is a difference in the organs or parts — 

 in the one case, petals, in the other, foliar appendages — but every 



