1 8 Traces of Unity in Plants. 



num and certain other plants. There are also many true 

 ovaries in which the carpels are imperfectly closed and the 

 ovules left exposed like the sporidia of the frond, or like 

 the buds of the leaves which have just been mentioned 

 in which, in fact, the ovule-producing carpel is scarcely 

 to be distinguished from the bud-producing leaf or from 

 the spore-producing frond. 



Nor are the immediate coverings of the seed to be 

 put outside the family circle which has been described 

 so far. The flower-bud and the axillary leaf-bud are 

 intimately related to each other, and in the realization 

 of this relationship a stand-point is gained from which it 

 is easy to see what must be the true nature of the cover- 

 ings of the seed. It would appear that the two sorts of 

 buds are reciprocally transmutable ; indeed, so they 

 must be if it be true, as it certainly is, that a plant will 

 produce flowers instead of leaves if it be under-fed, and 

 leaves instead of flowers in the contrary case. In some 

 monstrous and accidental forms of vegetation, moreover, 

 the character of the two buds interblend in one and the 

 same instance. The rose, for example, is very prone to 

 such anomalous productions, and there is nothing very 

 extraordinary in the particular metamorphosis described 

 by Goethe. A bud, destitute of any outward mark of 

 distinction, opens out into a perfect calyx and corolla, 

 and then, in place of the ovary and circlet of stamens, 

 gives birth to a stem. This central and exceptional 

 growth is gradually developed, and at length becomes a 

 branch, furnished with the usual appendages of hairs, 

 spines, and leaves, together with shrivelled and imperfect 

 petals and stamens, and buds, which themselves expand 

 in time into flowers of the same abnormal character as 

 the parent-bud. Here, indeed, the flower-bud changes 

 into the leaf-bud, and then again reverts to its former 



