368 Ever-sporting Varieties 



highest degree of metamorphy in the terminal 

 flowers of the stem itself, the weaker branches 

 having but little tendency towards the forma- 

 tion of the anomaly. The European pine or 

 Pinus sylvestris ordinarily has two needles in 

 each sheath, but trifoliolate sheaths occur on the 

 stems and stronger branches, where they prefer, 

 as a rule, the upper parts of the single annual 

 shoots. Camellia japonica is often striped in 

 the fall and during the winter, but when flower- 

 ing in the spring it returns to the monochro- 

 matic type. 



Peloric flowers are terminal in some cases, 

 but occur in the lower parts of the flower-spikes 

 in others. Some varieties of gladiolus com- 

 mence on each spike with more or less double 

 flowers, which, higher up, are replaced by single 

 ones. A wide range of bulbs and perennial gar- 

 den-plants develop their varietal characters 

 only partly when grown from seed and flower- 

 ing for the first time. The annual garden-for- 

 get-me-not of the Azores {Myosotis azorica) 

 has a variety with curiously enlarged flowers, 

 often producing 20 or more corolla-segments in 

 one flower. But this number gradually dimin- 

 ishes as the season advances. It would be quite 

 superfluous to give further proof of the general 

 validity of the law of periodicity in ever-sport- 

 ing varieties. 



