158 ANTHOTAXY, OK INFLORESCENCE. 



or a pedicel or peduncle above and out of connection with the 

 leaf which should subtend and accompany it. 1 



287. Mixed Inflorescence is not uncommon. This name is 

 given to clusters or ramifications in which the two types are con- 

 joined. Being heteromorphous, they are almost necessarily com- 

 pound, the two types belonging to different orders of ramification. 

 But under it may be included cases of comparatively simple 

 inflorescence, at least in the beginning, some of which nearty 

 fuse the two types into one. In the Teasel (Dipsacus) , an appar- 

 ently simple head or short spike comes first into flower at the 

 middle, from which the flowering proceeds regularly to the base. 

 Had it begun at the top, it would answer to Fig. 281, which, 

 blossoming from above downward by simple uniflorous lateral 

 axes along a monopodial primary axis, is a simple racemiform 

 cyme, while it may also be called a reversed or determinate raceme. 

 Something of this sort may be seen in certain species of Cam- 

 panula, with virgate inflorescence, the terminal blossom earliest, 

 the others following irregularly, or partly downward and partly 

 upward. In C. rapunculoides, when rather depauperate and 

 he inflorescence simple, the evolution is that of a true raceme, 

 except that a flower at length terminates the axis and develops 

 earlier than the upper half of the raceme. In Liatris spicata 

 and its near relatives, the heads, on the virgate general axis, 

 come into flower in an almost regular descending order, or are 

 reversely spicate. If in Fig. 281 the lower pedicels were prolonged 

 to the level of the upper, a simple corymbiform cyme would be 

 seen, with simple centrifugal evolution, that is, regularly from 

 the centre to the margin ; this is the counterpart of the rhipidium 

 or fan-shaped cyme, of Fig. 300, in which the evolution of the 

 blossoms is as regularly centripetal. The explanation of the 

 paradox is not far to seek. 



1 The position of a pedicel at the side of a bract in false racemes is ex- 

 plained in the foregoing note. It may occur in true racemose inflorescence 

 by the reduction of sessile secondary racemes down to an umbel of two 

 flowers, transverse to the bract (as in many species of Desmodium), and 

 thus seemingly lateral to it, or to a single flower on the right or left of it. 

 The coalescence of a pedicel to the axis for a considerable height above the 

 subtending bract in a simple inflorescence, or above the last leaf in a 

 sympodial one (concaulescence of Schimper), is common. So likewise bracts 

 or leaves may be for a good distance adnate to sympodial shoots, whether 

 peduncles or leafy flowerless branches. This (named recaulescence by 

 Schimper) is of most frequent occurrence in Solanaceae (in Datura, Atropa, 

 most species of Solanum, &c.), and is the explanation of their so-called 

 gemmate leaves, where a large leaf (really belonging lower down) has a 

 small leaf by the side of it. See Wydler in Bot. Zeit. ii. 689, &c., Sendtner 

 in Fl. Bras. x. 183, and Eichler, Bluthend. i. 199. 



