Anomalies in maize and its relatives—I 
PAUL WEATHERWAX 
(wITH FIVE TEXT FIGURES) 
A series of investigations on the grasses included in the tribe 
Maydeae (Tripsaceae in the recent literature) have incidentally 
brought under observation a number of characteristics sufficiently 
infrequent in occurrence to be termed anomalies. Some of these 
are unmistakably peculiarities of development determined by 
disease, mechanical injury, or other environmental influence; for 
others no definite cause can readily be assigned. Some are non- 
inherited fluctuations in which highly specialized structures revert 
in development to a more primitive condition; but others cannot 
be explained in terms of past history. 
While none of these teratological occurrences have any econ- 
omic significance, and few of them make any definite contribution 
to matters of purely botanical interest, yet they should be recorded 
in the literature of science for whatever they may be worth in our 
efforts to understand the maize plant and its relatives. Accord- 
ingly, the present is the first of a series of such contributions, which 
the writer purposes to make from time to time. 
FALSE POLYEMBRYONY 
In Maize.—On two occasions there have been found seeds of 
maize, each of which apparently contained two embryos. The 
first was a grain of Black Mexican sweet corn, which, due to wet 
weather at the time of maturity, had germinated while still 
inside the husk. Two plumules and two primary roots had 
emerged from the pericarp (Fic. 5). The second was in a lot of 
seedlings being grown for study. One grain was found bearing 
two stalks and two well-developed root systems (FIG. I). 
But dissection showed in each éase that, although the coleoptile 
and coleorhiza were also duplicated, there was only one cotyledon. 
The anomalous embryo had doubtless arisen from a single 
fecundated egg, and had been influenced in development by some 
unexplained disturbance of polarity at the time of the differentia- 
tion of the embryonal axis in on Eigen primordium. But in 
