224 



THE INFLORESCENCE. 



whole summer, until the powers of the plant are exhausted, or 

 until all the branchlets or peduncles are reduced to single inter- 

 nodes, or pedicels without any leaves, bracts, or bractlets, when 

 no further development can take place. Such cases enable us to 

 study the determinate inflorescence to advantage, and to follow the 

 successive steps of the ramification by direct observation. 



404. The Frscicle is a densely crowded cyme, with the flowers 

 almost sessile, or on short peduncles of nearly equal length ; as in 

 the Sweet William. 



405. A Glomerule is a cyme condensed into a head or short spike. 

 It is to the cyme what the capitulum is to the corymb or umbel. 



406. There are several abnormal modifications of inflorescence, 

 especially of the determinate or centrifugal kind, arising from ir- 

 regular development, or the suppression of parts, such as the non- 

 appearance sometimes of the central flower, or often of one of the 

 lateral branches at each division ; as in the ultimate ramifications 

 of Fig. 253, where one of the lateral pedicels is wanting. When 

 this deviation is completely carried out, that is, when one of the 

 side branches regularly fails to appear, the cyme is apparently 

 converted into a kind of one-sided raceme, and the flowers seem 

 to expand from below upwards, or centripetally. The diagram, 

 Fig. 254, when compared with Fig. 253, explains this anomaly. 

 The place of the axillary branch which fails to develope at each 

 ramification is indicated by the dotted lines. Cases like this occur 

 in several Hypericums, and in some other opposite-leaved plants. 

 An analogous case occurs in many alternate-leaved plants ; where 

 the stem, being terminated by a flower, is continued by a branch 

 from the axil of the uppermost leaf or bract : this, bearing a flow- 



FIG. 253. The open, progressively developed cyme of Arenaria stricta. 



