CONIFER.E. 



453 



this view the whole cone is a single flower with a number of small open carpels 

 (hitherto considered as bracts), which are far outstripped in their growth by their 

 seminiferous placentae (the scales). In the other Abietinese also, the female flowers 

 of which I have had no opportunity of examining, it may be concluded from the 

 descriptions that the cone is a single flower with numerous seminiferous scales 

 arranged spirally, not springing from the axils of leaves, but growing immediately 

 out of the axis of the cone, and therefore themselves leaves and of a carpellary 

 nature. Eichler (/. c.) says, in reference to Dammara, Cunninghamia, Athrotaxis, 

 and Sequoia :— ' The scales of a cone are in these genera all of one kind ; they 

 consist simply of open carpels; and, in order not to introduce confusion into the 

 definition of a flower, the whole of what is found on the axis, in other words the 

 whole cone, must be considered a single flower; and this is also necessary in the 

 case of the Araucarieae, the Cupressineae, and the male "catkins" of all Coniferae^' 

 In Araucaria each scale (or carpel) bears only a single ovule, which, according to 

 Eichler, is so enveloped by it that the only opening left is that of the micropyle 

 which faces the axis of the cone ; in Cunninghamia there are three ovules, in Athro- 

 taxis from three to five, in Sequoia from five to seven, in Sciadopitys as many as 

 seven or eight on one scale, and their micropyle here also faces the axis of the 

 cone. In Dammara the scale bears, according to Endlicher^, only one ovule which, 



bract (c in our figure"). Tii that cpsc the cone of these genera, in contradistinction to that of the 

 other Conifcrar and of Cycadcx, would be an inflorescence (cf. Caspary in Ann. des Sci. Nat. 4th 

 series, vol. XIV, p. 200, and Flora, 1862, p. 377); but this view I have already contested more in 

 detail in my first edition, p. 427. It is impossible to consider the seminiferous scale of Pinus and 

 Abies itself as a sinj,de carpel. In opposition also to the most recent views of Mohl (Bot. 

 Zeitg. 187 1, p. 2 2\ I cannot bring myself to consider the seminiferous scale of the true Abietineae 

 as a coherent structure formed of two leaves of an undeveloped branch. 



^ Eichler thinks that an exception must be made in favour of Podocarpus and Cephalotaxus. 



2 [Van Tieghem has been led by studying the distribution of the bundles in the different parts of 

 the female bud of Conifercc to the opinion— different from that expressed by Sachs— that the female 

 flower throughout this group of plants is in every case constructed after a single fundamental type 

 which has undergone various secondary modifications. He has given in a note to his French trans- 

 lation of the present work the following abstract of the conclusions which are worked out in greater 

 detail in his paper already cited in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles. 



Neither the axis of the female bud nor its leaves or bracts of the first order ever bear ovules. 

 It is always upon structures arising from the axils of these bracts that the ovules make their ap- 

 pearance. This establishes a fundamental distinction between Cycadese and Conifers. In the 

 former group it is always the leaves of the female bud of the first order that produce the ovules 

 directly. While therefore we may regard the female bud in Cycadese as well as the male as 

 contributing a single flower, this does not hold good in the case of Conifers. We may if we 

 please regard the male bud of Coniferre as a single flower, but the female bud is an inflorescence. 

 The stnicture which bears the ovule in Coniferse is always a foliar organ — the first and only 

 leaf of an axis which undergoes no further development. This leaf, which is more or less largely 

 developed beyond the circumscription of the ovule or ovules which it bears is an open carpel an 

 in itself constitutes the whole female flower. It is always inverted, that is to say, it arises upon the 

 suppressed axis which bears it with its ventral face opposite to and united with the ventral face ot 

 the primary bract. When the ovules do not terminate the carpel, it is upon its structurally dorsal— 

 but in respect of position upper— face that they arise, just as it is upon its structurally dorsal— but 

 in respect of position lower— face that the pollen-sacs arise upon the stamen. 



This is the general type. It remains to consider the principal secondary modifications which 

 are superinduced upon it in the different genera. 



Tlie axillary branch, which is reduced to its first leaf, is most frequently of the first generation 



