90 



VANDELLIA NUMMULARIFOLIA. 

 Tablk XXV. 



Chap. IIL 



Vandellia ntjmmulakifolia. 

 Seeds were sent to me by Mr. J. Scott from Calcutta of this 

 small Indian weed, which, bears perfect and cleistogamic * flowers. 

 The latter are extremely small, imperfectly developed, and never 

 expand, yet yield plenty of seeds. The perfect and open 

 flowers are also small, of a white colour with purple marks ; they 

 generally produce seed, although the contrary has been 

 asserted ; and they do so even if protected from insects. They 

 have a rather complicated structure, and appear to be adapted 

 for cross-fertilisation, but were not carefully examined by me. 

 They are not easy to fertilise artificially, and it is possible that 

 some of the flowers which I thought that I had succeeded in 

 crossing were afterwards spontaneously self-fertilised under the 

 net. Sixteen capsules from the crossed perfect flowers contained 

 on an average ninety-three seeds (with a maximum in one 

 capsule of 137), and thirteen capsules from the self-fertilised 

 perfect flowers contained sixty-two seeds (with a maximum in 

 one capsule of 135) ; or as 100 to 67. But I suspect that this 

 considerable excess was accidental, as on one occasion nine 

 crossed capsules were compared with seven self-fertilised cap- 

 sules (both included in the above number), and they contained 

 almost exactly the same average number of seed. I may add 



* The convenient term of cleis- 

 togavtio was proposed by Kuhn in 



an article on the present genus in 

 'Bot.Zeituug,' 1867, p. C5. 



