SCHAFFNER: SEXUAL STATE IN SAGITTARIA LATIFOLIA 105 
ended the growth with a single large carpellate flower. There 
was in this case, therefore, a complete reversal of sex, as stated, 
in the opposite direction from what usually takes place, a change 
from the male to the female condition in the progressive develop- 
ment of the inflorescence axis. Apparently it required but a 
slight change in the physiological activity to throw the branch 
from the female state to the male state and then back to the 
female state again. The other two basal branches of this com- 
pound inflorescence were carpellate below and staminate above 
in normal order. This case brings out an important point and 
shows that with a proper knowledge of the functional states of the 
protoplast, it should be possible to bring out reversals of sex 
of an opposite nature from that which the heredity of the plant 
allows under the normal environment of the species. 
The reversal of the sexual state from female to male typically 
takes place at or near the middle of the inflorescence axis. It 
may take place at any point, however, through all gradations 
from inflorescences with an equal number of carpellate and 
staminate flowers to those in which there is a single carpellate 
flower at the base or a single staminate flower at the tip. The 
next step results in monosporangiate inflorescences. If the male 
condition is determined before the development of the first 
flower incept the entire inflorescence is staminate, there being 
no reversal to the female state under normal conditions. If the 
female condition is determined at the beginning as is normally 
the case and this state is continued to the end, the entire in- 
florescence must, of course, be carpellate. Since in the field the 
patches of plants are usually crowded with interlacing rhizomes, 
it was not possible to determine whether any individual was 
completely staminate or carpellate. Theoretically such a con- 
dition must occasionally be produced in any given season. 
The following data which are taken from a single gathering of 
inflorescences in a patch of Sagittaria, growing in a ditch along 
the roadside east of Manhattan, Kansas, will show what one can 
frequently find in the field. The list does not show the pro- 
portion of monosporangiate inflorescences to bisporangiate in- 
florescences, since they were gathered especially with reference 
to their apparently extreme staminateness or carpellateness and 
the ordinary monecious ones were passed by. 
