344 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MAY 
degrees they grew beneath the water and sent up shoots more 
and more completely modified to an aquatic habit. 
It has been objected that plants highly specialized to a par- 
ticular mode of life, such as geophytes, are unlikely to give rise 
to a race so numerous and of such diversified form as monocotyle- 
dons. But the geophilous habit of a plant may be marked with- 
out any such profound modification in its structure as would 
destroy its capacity for adaptation to changed conditions. A 
geophyte is—as already suggested — particularly well suited to 
become amphibious. It acquires the climbing or twining habit 
with hardly less ease. Bryonia dioica and Tamus communis, two 
of our commonest perennial climbers, have very large tuberous 
rootstocks. Among the 187 genera mentioned in Bentham and 
Hooker’s Genera Plantarum as belonging to the order Liliaceae, 
sixteen are mentioned as including species with a climbing or 
twining stem. Of these I find that eleven possess underground 
stems; rhizomes, tubers, or even bulbous, in the mature con- 
dition. Species from two of the remaining five I have examined 
as seedlings, and the rudiments of a tuber are very clear. Con- 
cerning the underground organs of Rhipopozon, Semele, and 
Behnia I have no information. 
The absence of a normal cambium, which follows from the 
assumption of ‘the geophilous habit, is certainly unfavorable to 
the production of trees. The want is occasionally supplied by 
the formation of anomalous thickening-rings (Aloe, Dracaena, 
etc.), but among the palms no such expedient is found. With- 
out it they manage to grow into trees of great size in tropical 
and semitropical countries. Is it possible to trace the palms 
back to a geophilous ancestor ? 
Seedling palms are easily obtained, as they are much grown 
as pot-plants for indoor decoration. At this immature period of 
life they have many geophilous features. In the young seedling 
the hypocotyl is always short and commonly somewhat enlarged. 
The cotyledon sheathes the plumule more or less completely 
with its broad base. The first leaf of the stem bud is never more 
than a sheath; it is sometimes followed by one or two like itself 
before the first foliage leaf appears.* The stem at this time and 
28 MICHEELS, H., Recherches sur les jeunes Palmiers, efe. 105. Litge. 1889. 
