233 



methods of flowering — the partial or sporadic as contrasted with 

 the complete and simultaneous. The partial flowering, as in the 

 case of Arun dinar ia Sirnoni, is sometimes merely the beginning 

 of the end, and culminates in the flowering of the entire plant and 

 its death. Whether there are species that will continue to flower 

 at intervals and never break into that general flowering which is 

 always followed by the death of the individual plant, we do not 



yet know. 



regard 



vated species, it would appear that the production of flowers Ifl 

 fatal to that part of the plant affected. If the whole plant flowers 

 then the whole of it dies. Every one of the Phyllostachys that 

 has flowered hitherto at Kew has sooner or later died, with the 

 exception of the small portion of a plant of P. nigra var. 

 Boryana noted. Seedlings have been raised from most of them, 

 but as the parent plants have all proved to be varieties or forms 

 of P. nigra, it is doubtful whether their progeny will reproduce 

 their peculiar characters. 



Mr. E. H. Wilson, the well-known collector of Chinese plants 

 saw PJij/llostachys nigra in flower in the Ynnir-tsze valley in 

 May, 1903, and he says "I noted that only the flowering culms 

 die " (Gard. Chron. Aug. 12, 1005, p. 125). It would be interest- 

 ing to know whether the length of life in a bamboo would be 

 altered by deferring the sowing of the seed. Judging by oik's 

 ordinary experience it would not ; one would expect plants from 



the seed of Arundinaria Falconer i, sown in 1876, to reach the 



flowering state, other circumstances being equal, two years earlier 

 than plants raised from similar seed kept until 1878. Yet when 

 we consider the various accidents which even in a wild state 

 would help to vary the time of germination, it would seem that 

 some general law governs the flowering of many bamboos and 

 keeps it practically simultaneous. 



Under cultivation, on the other hand, the system of simultaneous 

 flowering of some of these species would appear to be breaking 

 down. For instance, Arundinaria Falcone ri in this country, so 

 far as our records show, first flowered between 1875 and IS 77 ; 

 in the vast majority of cases in 1876. But the flowering of the 

 present generation has already extended over five seasons. 



XXXVII.-ACCESSION OF TROPICAL AFRICAN 



PLANTS FROM 1899-1906. 



Otto Stapf. 



The accession of tropical African plants to the herbarium during 

 the last seven years has been particularly heavy, and as more than 

 two-thirds were unnamed it was quite impossible to deal with 

 them as they arrived. To avoid duplication of work only those 

 collections which for special reasons had to be dealt with imme- 

 diately were worked out separately, the bulk of them being 

 pooled and treated as a whole. This involved a considerable but 

 ««Airn^oKifl ri^io^r in ortTvi r>i <*t i n cr thf* deter urination of the earlier 



collections. 



African 



