Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 365 



the Oak, Beech and Poplar. A similar oscillation between infe- 

 rior-leaf formation and foliaceous-leaf formation, keeping pace 

 with the change of season, is seen in the creeping main-shoot of 

 Adoxa, and in the stock of Hepatica nobilis, creeping close to the 

 soil, with its short internodes, and which in so far deserves its 

 French name {la fille avant la mere) as its flowers, which unfold 

 before the foliage, do not belong to the same individual as the 

 foliage, but are produced laterally as a " daughter generation " 

 from the axils of the inferior-leaves of the maternal stem *. A 

 similar pha?nomenon, only in a higher degree (a rising and fall- 

 ing between foliaccous- and superior-leaf formation), is presented 

 by those plants whose intiorescence ends in a foliaceous coma, as 

 is remarkably the case in the Pine-Apple, and also in the New 

 Holland species of Melaleuca and Callistemon, whose crowded, 

 brush-like intiorescence {i. e. the region covered with superior- 

 leaves and bearing the flowers in the axils of these) returns and 

 forms foliaceous-leaves, and in the following year again attains 

 an inflorescence. 



While every leaf-formation may bring the progress of the 

 metamorphosis on a single shoot to a consummation, it is con- 

 ceivable that one shoot may be allowed to each step for itself 

 alone. Thus, there are shoots which represent inferior-leaf 

 formation alone; e.g. the root-stock oi Paris guadrifolia, the 

 tuberiferous branches of the rhizoma of the Potato f; and there 



attained by particular branches, deviating in character from the rest, — the 

 catkins which pass over leaf-formation advancing from the inferior-leaves 

 immediatelv to the superior-leaves out of whose axils the flowers are 

 emitted. 



* The same obtains in Galanfkus nivalis, in which every annual gene- 

 ration consists of one inferior leaf, one foliaceous-leaf with a vagina, and 

 one without a vagina, which follow each other in simple alternation, in a 

 distichous arrangement. The flower, as a branch, is emitted from the a.xil 

 of the second foliaceous-leaf, while the direct continuation of the shoot re- 

 turns again to inferior-leaf formation. In striking contrast to the extremely 

 simple relations of this plant we find Oralis tetraphylla and other species 

 of that genus, in which the sul)terraneous main-stem also presents an alter- 

 nation of inferior-leaf formation and foliaceous-leaf formation, advancing 

 with the change of season, but conjoined with a rare al)undance of leaves 

 and a complicated ])hvllotaxis. The number of the inferior-leaves amounts 

 to several hundreds ; and transverse sections of the bulbs, which last 

 through the winter and are formed by the close approximation of these 

 leaves, form some of the prettiest specimens of ])hyllotaxis, showing 21-15 

 arrangement through easily computable H-, \'6- and 21 -ranked oblique 

 spirals. The number of the foliaceous-leaves is not so large ; they develope 

 in the summer, and form an H- to l.i-leaved rosette, out of which the axil- 

 lary inflorescences issue, with their long peduncles. 



t In case (as sometimes occurs) the tuber does not pass through this 

 formation and advance to foliaceous-leaf formation. The tuber is the 

 thickened apex of the inferior-leaf shoot. Cf. the figure by Turpin, Mem. 

 du Mas. d'Hist. Nat. t. 19. pi. 2. 



