PROLIFICATION OP THE INFLORESCENCE. 103 



buds on the inflorescence. It must be distinguished 

 from ^^rescence, or the mere green colour of the floral 

 organs, and from chloranthy, in which all or the greater 

 portion of the parts of the flower are replaced by leaves. 

 Prohfication is, in fact, a formation of supernumerary 

 buds, leafy or floral, as the case may be, these buds 

 being sessile or stalked, the ordinary buds being not 

 necessarily changed. Prohfication of the inflorescence, 

 like the other varieties, admits of subdivision, not only 

 according to the fohar or floral nature of the bud, but 

 according to its position, terminal or median and lateral. 

 Terminal prohfication of the inflorescence, whether 

 leafy or floral, is hardly to be looked upon in the light of 

 a malformation^ seeing that a similar condition is so 

 commonly metwith normally, as in EpacriSy Metrosideros, 

 Bramelia, Eucomis, &c., wherein the leafy axis projects 

 beyond the inflorescence proper ; or as in Primula im- 

 perialism in which plant, as also in luxuriant forms of 

 P. sinensis^ tier after tier of flowers are placed in succes- 

 sion above the primary umbel. Nevertheless, when we 

 meet with such conditions in plants which, under 

 ordinary circumstances, do not manifest them, we must 

 consider them as coming under the domain of teratology. 



Median foliar prolification of the inflorescence is frequently 

 met with in Cmiifercey and has of late attracted unwonted 

 attention from the researches of Caspary, Baillon, and 

 others, on the morphology of these plants. The scales 

 and bracts of the cone in these abnormal specimens 

 frequently afford transitional forms of the greatest 

 value in enabling morphologists to comprehend the 

 real nature of the floral structure. It would be irre- 

 levant here to enter into this subject ; suflBce it merely 

 to say that an examination of very numerous specimens 

 of this kind, in the common larch and in Cnjptomeria 

 Japonica, has enabled me to verify nearly the whole of 

 Caspary's observations. A similar prolongation of the 

 axis occurred in some of the male catkins of CaMan^a 



' " Diaphysis inflorescentianini." Engelmann, ' De Anthol.,' 85. 



