g6 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. [Proc. 30 Ser. 



Cedars and other plants with white or white variegated 

 leaves are independent, manufacturing in the leaves and 

 other parts that are green the non-nitrogenous foods needed. 

 Any reduction in the number of green leaves, or in the 

 number of chlorophyll-containing-cells in the mesophyll, is 

 a reduction in the capacity of the plant to manufacture 

 food; and if all the leaves turn white the plant will die as 

 soon as the food is consumed which was elaborated and 

 stored while its leaves were green. The turning white, or 

 the failure to become green, of the leaves or any part of 

 the leaves of cedars, etc., is a variation neither useful nor 

 permanent; it is really a morbid condition. 



White redwoods, such as I have seen and here describe, 

 are not independent. They absorb from the still living 

 underground parts of the parent tree the non-nitrogenous 

 foods (starch, sugar, etc.) manufactured in its own green 

 leaves and stored in its own underground parts. These 

 stores of food are very great in old redwoods. When for 

 any reason a sucker starts with none of its leaves green, it 

 is exactly as well off, so long as the store of food in its par- 

 ent lasts, as if its leaves were green and as if it could manu- 

 facture food for itself. The activities and possibilities of the 

 white sucker are not abruptly terminated by the exhaustion 

 of its own very limited store of food. It can and does draw 

 on its parent for much food. In the variegated cedar we 

 have some leaves shirking their function as food-manufac- 

 turing organs, either because they were defective from the 

 time of their origin at the growing-point, or because they 

 have developed this pathological condition subsequently. 

 The white redwoods, on the contrary, are the vegetatively 

 produced offspring of a wholly independent organism which 

 live as parasites. They take on some of the characters of 

 parasites, as is shown by the absence of palisade cells in the 

 leaves, and by the rudimentary condition of the chromato- 

 phores and other protoplasmic contents of the mesophyll 

 cells. The}^ are also less vigorous and grow less rap- 

 idly than wholly independent though similarly produced 

 individuals. 



