Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 373 



Aphides, though, excepting the last one, they are all similar and 

 not even determinate as to number. 



To these examples from the animal kingdom much more nu- 

 merous ones from the vegetable kingdom might be added, though 

 I will only adduce a few of them here. Most Labiatijlora, 

 Si/nanthereo', Grasses, Puh/galea; Primulacece, the Dictnmmts, 

 Iris, Galantfms nivalis, &c., have a bimembral alternation of 

 generation in different ways, according to the partition of the 

 formations. In Paris, for example, the first generation takes 

 the lowest grade : it presents a subterranean inferior-leaf shoot 

 (rhizoma), which nevei- leaves the darkness of the earth, only 

 reaching the world of light, towards which all plants strive, in 

 its posterity, viz. in the quadrifoliate and unifloral lateral shoots 

 which it sends up. Tiie first generation of Viola odnrata and 

 allied species forms foliage proper ; still, the main axis tarries 

 close to the earth, and the second generations (the lateral flowers) 

 scarcely rise above the foliage. In Lijsimachia nummularia the 

 main-shoot, a rooting leaf-stem, creeps along the surface of the 

 ground, growing indefinitely, and terminating only in the (essen- 

 tial) lateral branches by its golden-yellow flowers. The main- 

 shoot rises perpendicularly, forms foliage proper, and passes 

 on to superior-leaf formation in many species of Veronica, e. g. 

 V. acinifolia, producing its flowers as a second generation out of 

 the axils of the leaves. The same holds good in regard to 07-o- 

 banche ramosa, which fixes itself and preys upon the root of 

 Hemp, though its main-shoot has no green leaves. A veiy re- 

 markable bimembral alternation of generation is shown by Adoxa, 

 now so famous, its name to the contrary notwithstanding*. The 

 main-shoot creeps along the ground, oscillating with the seasons 

 between leaf and inferior-leaf formation, — at every return of the 

 latter stretching out like a runner and boring into the earth. 

 Flowers and fruit, frustrated by the invariable retrogression of 

 the main-shoot, are produced by the aspiring perpendicular 

 branches, after a pair of small leaves on the scape, and several 

 insignificant superior leaves, out of whose axils the lateral flowers 

 are emitted as unessential shoots of the third degree. Hepatica 

 presents a similar division of the formations among the two ge- 

 nerations of shoots ; but the main-shoot, rejuvenated from year 

 to year and alternating between inferior-leaf and leaf formation, 

 is short and ui)right. The branches with their single flowers, 

 forming the second generation, arise in the axils of the scale-like 

 inferior-leaves. A bimembral succession of shoots occurs in 

 Convallaria Polygonatum, the genus Aloe, all species of Plantago, 



* E. g. Adoxa moschatellinu, which derives its name from bo^a (fame). 

 The relations of growtli in this plant have been correctly described by 

 Wydler. Rot. Zcit. 1844, p. ()57. 



