CHORISIS OR DEDUPLICATION. 255 



petaloid scales of Sapindacese) in the ligule of Grasses (298), and 

 the stipules (304). The former occupies exactly the same posi- 

 tion. The latter form an essential part of the leaf (259), and usu- 

 ally develope in a plane parallel with that of the blade, but between 

 it and the axis, particularly when they are of considerable size, 

 and serve as teguments of the bud, as, for example, in Magnolia 

 (Fig. 130) and Liriodendron. The combined intrapetiolar stipules 

 of Melianthus, &c., furnish a case in point, to be compared with 

 the two-lobed internal scale of the stamens in Larrea, the two- 

 cleft adnate appendage of the petals in Caryophyllese, Sapindus, 

 &c. ; and instances of cleft or appendaged stipules may readily be 

 adduced to show that such bodies are as prone to multiplication by 

 division as other foliar parts. The supposition of a true axillary 

 origin of the organs in question, therefore, appears to be needless, 

 and it would certainly introduce much complexity into the theory 

 of the structure of the flower. Still, as the axillary branch must 

 begin with a single phyton, its development may in the flower be 

 restricted to one phyton (as in the pistillary leaf in the axil of a 

 bract in Coniferse) ; thus giving a single axillary organ, which, if 

 it multiply at all as it developes, may do so by collateral chorisis. 

 And, reduced to the simplest case, between the transverse division 

 of a nascent phyton, and the axillar production of a second phyton 

 at an extremely early period in the development of that which 

 subtends it, there is little assignable difference. At present, ac- 

 cordingly, we are of opinion that the same generic name may 

 properly enough be employed both for the collateral and the verti- 

 cal multiplication of organs, where two or more bodies occupy the 

 place of one, carefully distinguishing, however, the two different 

 cases ; and also, that a special term is needful for discriminating 

 without circumlocution between such multiplication and that by the 

 regular augmentation of floral organs through the development of 

 additional circles. Nor is a special term the less requisite, at 

 least, in systematic botany, because we recognize, in one or both 

 kinds of chorisis, processes or modes of division which are com- 

 mon to the floral organs and to the foliage.* 



* We are aware that Dr. Lindley summarily rejects the whole doctrine of 

 chorisis, or any evolution of two or more bodies in the normal place of one, 

 however explained ; and for three reasons, which may be cited from Introd. 

 to Botany, 1, p. 333, with a word of comment. " 1. There is no instance of 



