50 ADHESION 



Synspermy, or Union of the Seeds. Seeds may be united 

 together in various degrees, eitlier by their integuments,^ 

 or by their inner parts. Such union of the seeds, 

 however, is of rare occurrence. It takes place nor- 

 mally, to a slight extent, in certain cultivated forms 

 of cotton, wherein the seeds are aggregated together 

 into a reniform mass, whence the term kidney cotton. 

 Union of the parts of the embryo is treated under 

 another head (see Synophty). 



Adhesion between the axes of different plants. Under this 

 head may be classed the union that takes place between 

 the stems, branches, or roots of different plants of the same 

 species, and that which occurs between individuals of 

 different species; the first is not very different in its 

 nature from cohesion of the branches of the same 

 plant (figs. 21, 22). It finds its parallel, under natural 

 circumstances, among the lower cryptogams, in which 

 it often happens that several individual plants, originally 

 distinct, become inseparably blended together into one 

 mass. In the gardening operations of inarching, and 

 to some extent in budding, this adhesion of axis to axis 

 occurs, the union taking place the more readily in pro- 

 portion as the contact between the younger growing- 

 portions of the two axes respectively is close. The 

 huge size of some trees has been, in some cases, attri- 

 buted to the adnation of different stems. This is said 

 to be the case with the famous plane trees of Bujuk- 

 dere, near Constantinople, and in which nine trunks 

 are more or less united together." 



A similar anastomosis may take place in the roots. 

 Lindley cites a case wherein two carrots, of the white 

 Belgian and the red Surrey varieties respectively, had 

 grown so close to each other that each twisted half 

 round the other, so that they ultimately became 

 soldered together; the most singular thing with 

 reference to this union was, that the red carrot 



' Nympluea hiten, JEnciihig Hippocastanum, &c. Sec Moquin, * El. Ter. 

 Veg.,' p,. 277. C. Martins, ' Promenade Botanique,' p. 8. 



