42 ADHESION. 



times the outermost, at other times the innermost 

 disappear.^ 



Occasionally there appears to be, as it were, a 

 transference of the parts of one flower to another. 

 One of the simplest and most intelligible cases of this 

 kind is recorded by Wigand in the 'Flora' for 1856, 

 in a compound flower of Polygonatnm anceps, in which 

 ^vithin a twelve-parted perianth there were twelve 

 stamens and two pistils, one four-celled, the other two- 

 celled ; hence it would appear as if a carpel belonging 

 to one flower had become united to those constituting 

 the pistil of the adjacent one. Among Orchids this 

 fusion of some of the elements of different flowers, 

 together with the suppression of others, is carried to 

 such an extent as to render the real structure 

 difficult to decipher. Sometimes flowers of Ophri/s 

 aranifera, at first sight seeming normal as to the 

 number, and almost so as regards the arrangement 

 of their parts, have yet, on examination, proved to be 

 the result of a confluence of two flowers. Mr. Mog- 

 gridge has observed similar phenomena in the same 

 species at Mentone. 



Sometimes the fusion affects flowers belonging to 

 different branches of the same inflorescence, as in 

 Centranthus ruber , described by Buchenau,' Flora,' 1857, 

 p. 293, and even a blossom of one generation of axes 

 may be united with a flower belonging to another 

 generation. Thus M. Michalet^ speaks of a case 

 wherein the terminal flower of Betonica alopecuros was 

 affected with Peloria, and fused with an adjacent one 

 belonging to a secondary axis of inflorescence, and not 

 yet expanded. This latter flower had no calyx, but in 

 its place were three bracts, surrounding the corolla ; this 

 again was united to the calyx of the terminal bloom 

 in a most singular manner, the limb of the corolla 

 and that of the calyx being so joined one to the other 



C. Morrcn, ' Bull. Acad. Belg.,' vol. xv (Fuchsia, p. 89) ; vol. xviii, 

 p. 591, (Lobelia, p. 142) ; vol. xix, p. 352 ; vol. xx, p. 4. 

 ' Bull. See. Bot. Fr.,' vol. vii, p. 625. 



