PROLIPICATION. 101 



mation than the median form. If only the number of 

 orders and genera be reckoned, the truth of this state- 

 ment will be scarcely recognised ; but if individual cases 

 could be estimated, the difference in frequency between 

 the two would be very much more obvious. This may, 

 perhaps, be explained by the fact that the branch has 

 a greater tendency to grow in length than it has to 

 develop buds fi'om the axils of the leaves. The flower 

 is admitted to be homologous with the branch, and it is 

 also known that, up to a certain time, the branch -bud 

 or leaf-bud and the flower-bud do not essentially differ.^ 

 At a later stage the difference between the two is 

 manifested, not only in the altered form of the lateral 

 organs in the flower-bud, but in the tendency to an 

 arrest of growth, thus limiting the length of the central 

 axial portion. Now, in prolified flowers the functions 

 and, to a considerable extent, the appearance of a leaf- 

 bud or of a branch are assumed, and with them the 

 tendency to grow in length is developed. Median pro- 

 hfication, therefore, in this sense, is a further step in 

 retrograde metamorphosis than is the axillary form. 

 To grow in length, and to produce axillary buds, are 

 ahke attributes of the branch ; but the former is much 

 more frequently called into play than the latter ; for 

 the same reason, median prolification is more common 

 than the axillary form. This is borne out by the 

 frequency with which apostasis, or the separation of 

 the floral whorls one from another, to a greater degree 

 than usual, is met with in prohfied flowers. 



In both forms the adventitious growth is much more 

 frequently a flower-bud or an inflorescence than a leaf- 

 bud or a branch. This may be due to the position of 

 the flowers on a portion of the stem of the plant espe- 

 cially devoted to the formation of flower-buds, to the 

 more or less complete exclusion of leaf-buds, i. e. on 

 the inflorescence. This conjecture is borne out by the 

 comparative rarity with which prolification has been 

 observed in flowers that are solitary in the axils of the 



' Linn., ' Prolepsis,' vii; Goethe, 'Metamorph,' 96, 103. 106. 



