66 



MORPHOLOGY OP STEMS. 



the cladophyll of Ruscus (called Butcher's Broom in England, 

 Fig. 123) not only becomes firm, hard, and spiny-tipped, but 

 it exhibits the character of a 

 branch by bearing flowers on the 

 middle of one face, in the axil of 

 a little bract. Under this view 

 such a dsdophyU would seem to 

 be a- flattened branch of two in 

 ternodes, or else of one internode 

 with a flower-stalk adnate to it. 

 In Myrsiphyllum (a South Afri- 

 can climber, commonly cultivated 

 under the erroneous name of 

 Smilax, Fig. 122), the cladophyll 

 is wholly leaf-like in appearance 

 as well as in function, and it never bears either scale-leaf 

 or blossom ; but the flowers are on slander stalks from buds out 

 of the same axil. (See Dickson in Trans. Bot. Soc. Eclinb. 

 xvi., and Van Tieghem, Bull. Bot. Soc. France, xxxi., for a 

 discussion of the nature of cladophylla.) 



128. To all such leaves or imitations of leaves, Bischoff has 

 given the name PIIYLLOCLADIA, sing. PHYLLOCLADIUM. To those 

 definitely restricted to one internode, and which so closely 

 counterfeit leaves, Kunth gave the name of CLADOUIA, sing. 

 CLADODIUM. The best common name for all productions which 

 imitate leaves would have been that of phyllodiuin 

 (meaning simply a leaf-like body) ; but that term 

 was first applied and is restricted to the case 

 of a petiole imitating the J>lade of a leaf. The 

 name Phyllocladium (meaning a leaf-like branch) 

 may properly be retained for the whole scries of 

 leaf-like bodies here described. But for those of 

 the preceding paragraph, which are so peculiarly 

 leaf-like, Kunth's name of Cladodium (i. e. a 

 branch-like body) is false in meaning, and may 

 be replaced by that of CLADOPHVLLOI (i. e. leaf- 

 branch), or in shorter English CLADOPHYLL. 



129. Frondose Steins. Finally, in some few 

 phaenogamous plants, the whole vegetation is re- 

 duced to a simple leaf-like expansion, as in Duckweed (Lemna) , 



FIG. 122. Myrsiphyllum, with cladophylls serving for foliage; the true leaves con- 

 sisting of minute and very inconspicuous scales subtending the former. 



FIG. 123. A single cladophyll of RUKCUR aculeatus in the axil of a scale-leaf, bearing 

 another scale-leaf on the middle of its face, and flowers in the axil of this. 



FIG. 124. Letnna minor, a common Duckweed, whole plant in flower, magnified. 



