Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 239 



vegetative increase. A similar case has also occurred in Ger- 

 many. In the Grand-ducal Gardens at Schwetzingen there is a 

 M'eeping-willow, which^ although a descendant from the common 

 parent tree of all European weeping-willows, has changed its 

 gender to such a degree, that we not only find on it the most 

 heterogeneous stages of transition from female flowers to male 

 ones, but on many branches purely male catkins are produced*. 

 Besides these cases, a curled variety of weeping-willow, Malice 

 ci'ispa or S. annularis of the gardens, is known ; which, as it is 

 a mere garden plant, has probably been produced by slip-propa- 

 gation. If it be true that we sometimes obtain varieties with 

 hanging branches from several kinds of trees by grafting the 

 slips inverted, we should have one of the most remarkable ex- 

 amples of the production of a singular peculiarity by non-sexual 

 increase. But even if such exceptions did not exist, and if in 

 every case a series of peculiarities which are extinguished in 

 seminal propagation were continued by grafting, yet we cannot 

 perceive how we can seriously refuse an individual existence to 

 such stocks as these, produced, it is true, by non-sexual propa- 

 gation, but still completely separated externally, developing in 

 different places and under the most dissimilar relations, and ex- 

 hibiting subordinate differences indefinitely, though with certain 

 similar characteristics. But if we were to make any concessions 

 on this point, we should be carried irresistibly on to others. 



Most of the modes of non-sexual propagation thus far consi- 

 dered agree in this particular : that some shoot of the plant, 

 whether it be undeveloped (eye, bud), or developed (branch, 

 sucker, layer, &c.), is separated from the parent-stock by natural 

 development itself, or by artificial means. As the nature of the 

 separable part is not changed by the separation, it is no great 

 step to attribute individuality to the shoot (or as it is commonly 

 called, the bud), even when it is not separated from the stock. 

 Each single plant-stock could then be no longer regarded as an 

 individual in the usual meaning of the term, but as a united 

 family of individual shoots ; — a view which seems to be of high 

 antiquity; as passages are found in Aristotle f and Hippo- 



* This tree was first observed by C. Schimper in 1827. Some remarks 

 upon it may be found in Spenner's Flora Friburgensis, vol. iii. p. 1061. 



t Cf. Wimmer, Phytologia; Aristotelicae Fragmenta, §§ 23-28, 6h' et 

 113. I cannot discover that explicit acknowledgement of the individuality 

 of shoots or buds, which is said by Schultz (Anaphytose, p. 24) to be fouml 

 in iVristotle, either in Schultz's quotations, or even in Wimraer's complete 

 collection of the passages in Aristotle referring to plants. It is true that 

 Aiistotle repeatedly speaks of the (iivisihility of plants ; says that separated 

 parts of plants may continue to exist ; that on this account man}' trees may 

 spring from a single source ; that many plants are propagated by slips 

 {ano (nrapaynaTcov drrotfiVTfvofitpiov). and by lateral bud-formation (tw 



