136 



BOTANY. 



B 



nates in a flower between two branches. These branches, 

 or secondary stems, also terminate in flowers, each one of 



which is situated be- 

 tween branches of 

 the third order, and 

 so on. 



In this way is 

 formed a forked or 

 dichotomouscyme. If, 

 in place of two, we 

 have three branch- 

 es, forming a sort 

 of whorl around 

 the primary stem,, 

 and each of these 

 branches has anoth- 

 er whorl of three 

 tertiary branches, 

 and so on, we get a 

 trichotomous cyme. 

 When the branching 

 is carried forward, 

 as seen in Fig. 411, 

 the cyme becomes 

 FIG. 409. globose. When the 



central flower is sup- 

 pressed, the process of development is not easily traced. 



Suppose that, at each stage of the branching, one of 

 the divisions is regularly suppressed, as shown in Fig. 412, 

 where the dotted lines take the place of the absent 

 branches, the cyme is apparently changed into a one-sided 

 raceme, and the flowers seem to expand in the same way 

 as in the indefinite raceme. In opposite-leaved plants 

 bearing this kind of inflorescence, the leaf or bract op- 

 posite the flower shows that the raceme is definite ; but 

 when, as in Fig. 413, there is no such bract, it is not easy 



