144 ANTHOTAXY, OR INFLORESCENCE. 



266. Position of Flowers or Clusters. Flower-buds accord 

 with leaf-buds in origin, position, and structure, to this extent at 

 least, that the parts of both are leaves or homologues of leaves, 

 crowded in whorls or spirals upon a short portion of stem or 

 axis ; and as leaf-buds are either terminal or axillary (15, 75) 

 so also are flower-buds ; as a leaf-bud may give rise to a simple 

 or a compound growth, i. e. may branch again and again, or not 

 branch at all, so flower-bearing branches, or the flower-bearing 

 extremity of a stem or branch, may bear a single flower, or a 

 more or less compound cluster. Thus, in Fig. 276, an axillary 

 peduncle, or naked branch, bears at apex a solitary flower ; in 

 Fig. 277, a peduncle bears a loose cluster of flowers, each of 

 which springs from the axil of a small bract; in Fig. 285, 

 a terminal peduncle bears at summit a dense flower-cluster. 

 Flowers are either solitary or in clusters. When solitar}-, they 

 are naturally without bracts, being subtended instead (as in Fig. 

 276) by ordinary foliage. 



267. The elevation either of a solitary flower or a cluster on a 

 peduncle, or of individual flowers of a cluster on pedicels, is only 

 incidental. The flowers may be stalkless, i. e. sessile. 



268. The Kinds of Inflorescence which have received distinctive 

 names are various, but are all reducible to two types, which, 

 generally well marked, may sometimes pass into each other, and 

 which are not rarely combined in the same compound inflores- 

 cence. 1 The two types differ in basis as do axillary from ter- 

 minal buds ; in the one the flowers are axillary or lateral, in the 

 other terminal in respect to the axis from which each flower 01 

 its pedicel arises. But inasmuch as every flower, whatever its 

 position, is terminal to its own stalk or axis, it is better to dis- 

 tinguish the two types in other terms, and to name them the 



269. Indefinite and Definite, or, in equivalent and similar terms, 

 the Indeterminate and Determinate. 2 Each may be either simple 

 or compound. It is from the simple that the definitions are to 

 be drawn. In the former type, the rhachis or main axis of the 

 inflorescence is not terminated by a flower, but lateral axes, or 

 pedicels, are. In the latter, both the main or primary and the 

 lateral or secondary axes or stalks are so terminated. An inde- 

 terminate flower-cluster may go on to develop internode after 



1 Inflorescence, as has been well insisted on by Guillaud (in Bull. Soc. 

 Bot. France, iv. 29), is a mode, not a thing. The things sometimes but in- 

 appropriately so called are flower-clusters, for which, if a general technical 

 name is needed, that otAnthemia, in English Anthemy, suggested by Guillaud, 

 is as good as any. 



a Also named by Eichler (Bliithendiagramme, 33, following Guillaud, 1. c.) 

 the Cymoe and the Botryose type. 



