40 



OVULIFEROUS SCALES. 



development of the foliar organs will not fail to recognise that, 

 although some of the states of development here named are wanting 

 in Taxads and Conifers, the bracts and stamens are really meta- 

 morphosed foliage leaves with which they strictly agree as regards 

 position and arrangement. 



Direct evidence of the bract being a metamorphosed foliage leaf is 

 sometimes afforded by abnormal cones as that here figured, which is 

 a proliferous cone of Abies Veitchii gathered many years ago by 

 Mr. Maries in Japan, the bracts of which had reverted to foliage 

 leaves.* That the stamens also are meta- 

 morphosed foliage leaves is shown by the 

 occurrence of intermediate states in monstrous 

 growths, such as may be sometimes observed in 

 Callifris robusta, a beautiful Australian Conifer 

 cultivated in the Temperate House at Kew, in 

 which the uppermost leaves pass into stamens 

 bearing anthers at their base, and these into 

 true peltate stamens with the anthers on the 

 under surface. A similar sequence has also been 

 observed in species of Juniperus, Cupressus, etc. 



But the morphological interpretation of the 

 ovuliferous or seed-scale is by no means so clear, 

 and various hypotheses respecting it have been 

 broached, the discussion of which lias given rise 

 to a mass of literature far too voluminous to 

 admit of quotation in this place. Whether it 

 is simply a modified leaf (Lindley), an open 

 carpellary leaf (R. Brown), a dtdouUement of 

 the bract (Brongniart), a rachis (F. Mueller), 

 a cladode (Baillon), a greatly developed placenta 

 (Sachs), or any other form of growth, this much 

 may be accepted as consistent with the facts of 

 morphology and anatomy : " That the fruit-scale 

 is something super-added to the bract ; that it may 

 arise either from the base of the bract or apparently 

 from the axis just within or above it ; that its struc- 

 ture is neither that of a leaf proper, nor that of 

 an ordinary shoot ; but that it does present close 

 resemblance in structure to a cladode. "f 

 The position of the staminate flowers and the cones in respect of 

 the branches or axial growths that produce them is either distinctly 

 terminal or lateral in the axils of the leaves. In the TAXACE^E Both 

 sexes are lateral and axillary in Taxus, Torreya, Cephalotaxus, 

 Podocarpus ; terminal in Saxegothaea and on the short arrested 

 branchlets or " spurs " of Ginkgo. In the CONIFERS The staminate 

 flowers are terminal at the points of the young shoots nearly 

 throughout the Cupressmeae, whilst the strobiles or cones are either 



['-, * Cones of Tsugn Brunoniana in which some of the bracts had reverted to foliage leaves 

 were sent to the author by Mr. Imbert Terry from Strete Raleigh, near Exeter. 

 t Masters in Journ. Linn. Soc. XXVII. 327. 



Fig. -2~. Proliferous cone of Abies 

 Veitchii with the bracts transformed 

 into foliage leaves, and with the axis 

 prolonged into a branchlet with 

 ordinary foliage. Nat. size. 



