4G2 Miscellaneous. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



MOVEMENT OF THE STYLE OF GOLDFUSSIA ANJSOPHYLLA, 



The following note by M. Morren accompanied the presentation 

 to the Royal Academy of Brussels of a Memoir, entitled " Re- 

 searches on the Movement and Anatomy of the Style of Goldfussia 

 anisophyUa," referred to above in p. 396. 



" The object of the memoir which I now present to the Academy 

 is to make known the mechanism employed by nature to move the 

 pistil of this interesting plant. In his new Physiology (1838), M. 

 Treviranus regretted that I had not explained my ideas relative to 

 the movement of the column of the Stylidiese, a movement of which 

 I saw the cause in the excitability of the fecule, considered as an 

 organized part, as a living organ of the plant, and not as a chemical 

 product, as an inert substance. I now fulfill the wish of M. Trevi- 

 ranus by this fresh memoir. The movement of the style of the Gold- 

 fussia had escaped the investigation of naturalists ; it is notwith- 

 standing very remarkable. Most of the flowers in which we see a 

 moveable pistil possess a bilabiate stigma ; here the moveable part 

 is awl-shaped and rather spindle-shaped. The true stigma occupies 

 only the dorsal part of the style, and when it bends back it removes 

 as far as possible from the stamina ; when it again erects itself, it 

 comes in contact with collecting hairs, which from the position of the 

 flower, or by the help of insects, receive the pollen. The final cause 

 of the pha&nomenon is very certainly the accomplishment of fecunda- 

 tion ; but the mechanical cause is seated in the distension of the 

 cylindrenchyme of the stigma; its tissue is formed by long cylinders 

 dilatable at one or other of the extremities, and each is filled with a 

 liquid containing globules. These globules are excitable. They are 

 naturally carried towards the outer extremities of the cylindrenchyme, 

 and then these extremities dilating, make the stigma bend ; but when 

 it is touched the globules and the liquid flow back to the bottom of 

 the cylinders, and in this case, this side becoming the longest, the style 

 erects or bends itself in a direction the reverse of that which it had 

 before. The physiological cause resides therefore in the excitability 

 of a vital fluid. I have made several series of experiments to prove 

 these assertions, and I have given the anatomy of the parts. I am 

 not aware that a similar structure has ever been found in a moveable 

 part of plants. 



*' The morphology and the metamorphoses of the hairs likewise 

 furnished as to this plant some curious observations. I have taken 



