Art. XXVII. — Analytical Notice of the ^ Transactions of the Lin- 

 nean Society of London,^ vol. xviii. |?^ 4. August, 1841. 



(Continued from p. 60). 



Art. XXXII. — Notice of a Plant ivhich produces perfect Seeds without 

 any apparent Action of Pollen. By Mr. John Smith, A.L.S. 



This curious and interesting member of the Euphorbiaceae, to which 

 Mr. Smith has assigned the name of Coelehogyne ilicifolia, is a native 

 of Moreton Bay, on the east coast of New Holland, whence three plants 

 were sent to the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, in 1829, by Mr. Allan 

 Cunningham, who was unable to determine the natural order to which 

 it belonged, not having seen either flowers or fruit. Mr. Brown also 

 " collected specimens of this plant, but equally without fructification, 

 at Keppel Bay, on the same coast, in 1802." Under cultivation the 

 plants retain their scrubby habit, and have much the appearance of 

 dwarf holly -bushes. 



" Shortly after their introduction the plants produced female flowers, an examina- 

 tion of which proved the genus to he Euphorhiaceous, and allied to Sapium : hut al- 

 though I have watched them carefully from year to year, I have heen unsuccessful in 

 detecting anything like male flowers or pollen heaving organs; and T should naturally 

 have passed them over as dioecious, and considered the three introduced individuals 

 as females, had not my attention heen particularly directed to them in consequence of 

 each of them producing fruit and perfect seeds, from which I succeeded in raising 

 young plants. This, too, was not the result of one year, but of several successive 

 years' sowing : the plant now exhibited to the Society was raised last year, and the si- 

 milarity of the offspring to the parent would alone lead me to conclude that it is not 

 the result of cross-fecundation. The circumstances connected with the situation of 

 the plant in the garden, and the absence of allied male plants, as also the peculiarity 

 of the natural order to which it belongs, which do not readily hybridize, led me to be- 

 lieve that no foreign pollen had fecundated the ovarium ; and on watching the progress 

 of the stigma all doubts were removed. * * I have already said that the 



stigma consists of three connate lobes, which are more or less notched ; at first the 

 lobes are depressed on the ovarium, but as the ovarium swells they lose their reddish 

 colour and become inclined upwards, retaining their succulent and healthy appear- 

 ance till dried up by the ripening of the fruit : the surface has a granular appearance, 

 derived from minute papillae, and showing no signs of having been acted on by pol- 

 len. Spiral vessels occur in the thick part of the base of the stigma, and are doubt- 

 less connected with the vascular tissue of the ovarium. I have seen nothing like pol- 

 len-tubes. The stigmatic surface remaining so long unchanged aS'ords a strong proof 

 of its not having been acted upon by pollen, it being well known that the stigma of 

 many plants remains for a long time unaltered, but soon after the application of pol- 

 len a change takes place, as is readily seen in Orchideae. 



" On considering the circumstances above noticed, and in particular the absence of 



