PHANEROGAMIA : FLOWERS. 301 



course of development, and composition, mostly merely naming the 

 peculiar mode of appearance in particular families ; e. g. anthela of 

 the Juncacece, glomerulus of the Cyperacea ; according to others, also, 

 of the Amarantacece and Chenopodiacea, moreover panicula, fasci- 

 culus, thyrsus, cyma, &c. with altogether indeterminate definitions. 



If the manufacture of words, without principles of definition, without 

 thorough investigation of particulars, has prevailed anywhere, it has in 

 the study of the inflorescence. The study of the fruit perhaps excepted, 

 there is no part of Botany in which prevail such confusion, such a wild 

 waste of synonymes, and yet such imperfection and incompleteness of 

 the whole subject, as here. Perhaps Linnaeus even shares the blame here ; 

 for certainly no part was so superficially treated by him as the inflores- 

 cence which he named, without starting, as elsewhere, from accurate de- 

 finitions, merely according the superficial impression of some few condi- 

 tions with some words not even defined, but explained by examples. In 

 this path others followed, and only Roper, opening a new way, furthered 

 the study in many respects, yet without finding or ensuring accurate 

 results. As yet we have not the history of development of one single 

 inflorescence, though many fancies indeed, as they have originated one 

 out of another. Since no principles can be laid down for such play of 

 imagination, every one has his own, and every one takes the matter in a 

 different way, not merely in the more complicated, but, in some measure, 

 in the simpler forms of inflorescence. What a quantity of paper has been 

 written over during the last fifty years, on the import of the extra- 

 axillary inflorescence of the species of Solatium, on the spirally coiled 

 inflorescence of the Boraginacece ! but has one single botanist made an 

 attempt to look how they are formed, in order thus to explain their 

 nature ? And, disregarding this, what illogical confusion is ex- 

 hibited in the common classification of inflorescences by almost all 

 authors ! The inflorescence, say most, is the x arrangement of the 

 flowers upon the stalk. The division, therefore, can only be founded 

 on the difference of arrangement. But very few inflorescences are de- 

 fined according to this ; the spadix is distinguished by the substantiality 

 of the rachis ; the catkin, by the articulation with the plant, or with 

 Bischoff by the nature of the flowers ; the corymbus and fasciculus, 

 panicula and cymus, according to Lindley, by the order of blossoming. 

 Link, on account of the imaginary want of bracts in the Ficus, makes a 

 new word, in opposition to the calathium of Composite ; but he calls 

 the bractless raceme of the Cruciferce a raceme. Forms of inflorescence 

 are distinguished by the order of opening of the flowers ; but the inflo- 

 rescence of Dipsacus, which opens its flower from the noddle upward and 

 downward, is a capitulum, like those which open the flowers from below 

 upward. Here it is absolutely impossible for one individual to devise 

 means; only the earnest co-operation of many, especially of those who 

 have authority in science, will be sufficient to introduce gradually a 

 better and simpler, consequently an easier, treatment of the subject. 

 But when will the time come wherein the majority of botanists will, 

 not seemingly, but according to the spirit and the truth, keep science 

 steadily in view, instead of themselves and the gratification of their 

 own vanity ? 



Starting from the simplest case, we gain the following mode of view- 

 ing the subject. Flowers originate from buds, and these originate, 

 except the terminal bud, normally only from the axils of leaves. The 

 first and simplest inflorescence is, consequently, the solitary flower at the 



