246 Miscellaneous. 



the bark. In many cases one of these buds, usually the lower and 

 really axillary one, never pushes into growth. In Gymnodadus 

 neither upper nor lower would probably ever push, only for the 

 fact that it matures no terminal bud, and thus the laterals have to 

 renew the next season's growth. But for this, Gymnodadus would 

 go up like a palm, or, more familiarly, as Arcdia spinosa does, with- 

 out a single branch. Faihng in the terminal, biit two laterals 

 push, giving the branches their dichotomous character. The two 

 which push are always the upper ones in the series of 2, 3, or 4 

 which appear in this species. 



The purpose of this duplication of axillary buds will interest all 

 who study this part of botany. I find that they are not for the 

 dupHcation of parts, but are separately organized from one another. 

 Thus in Cratcegus and Gleditschia the upper bud produces a spine, 

 the lower is organized to grow as an axillary shoot the next season. 

 But the best illustration of the distinctive organization is in those 

 cases where both upper and lower buds sometimes push the same 

 season, as in Itea, Lonicera, Caprifolium, or Halesia. Here we 

 find that one is organized for floral organs, and the other for axil- 

 lary prolongation. The upper bud always has the same function, 

 and the lower its own, in the same species. 



A flower being a modified branch, in which the bract is the leaf 

 and the peduncle the axillary bud, it follows that the laws of 

 axillary stem-production will be more or less reproduced in the in- 

 florescence. 



Referring, now, to my paper on adnation in Conifera3, we 

 found that the true leaves of many genera in this order were ad- 

 uate to the stem, forming what some botanists have termed pidvini, 

 or cushions, under the fascicles of some species of Finus, and that 

 what are commonly called leaves, the " needles," are really phyl- 

 loidal shoots. An examination of Abies excelsa will show that the 

 upper portion of the needle has a different origin from the lower 

 adnate portion, or pulvinus, and that in all probability it is a mo- 

 dification of the phenomenon referi'ed to in Gymnodadus and other 

 plants, of a longitudinal string of buds, in which the iijiper is of a 

 different organization from the lower one. In Larix it was shown 

 that in the verticils, or perhaps more properly spurs or clusters, the 

 true leaves were free, while in the elongated axis they became for 

 most of their length adnate with the stem, forming the spathulate 

 scales we find peel off" the two-year-old wood. 



At the flowering-time of the larch, the male and female flowers 

 proceed from the termination of the spurs — not merely " of the 

 preceding year," according to Gray's ' Manual,' but in some cases 

 of many preceding years, " the sterile from leafless buds, the fertile 

 mostly with leaves below " (Gray's ' Manual,' 5th ed. p. 472). 

 "Why have the female flowers leaves under them, and the male 

 none ? Comparing the male and female catkins, we see why. The 

 scales of the male are formed out of the leaves which become 

 fully formed in the female one. The pair of anther-cells are thus 

 simply on the back of a transformed leaf, just as we find the spore- 

 cases of ferns borne in the same way. The weaker organization 



