138 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [FEBRUARY 
Rhopalocnemis. The plant body is tuber-like, frequently as large as a man’s 
head, is entirely devoid of even a trace of foliar organs, and is parasitic upon 
the roots of various trees. It seems to pass several years underground and 
comes to the surface but ashort time before the development of flowers. The 
thick spicate flower clusters burst through the outer layers of the tuber- 
ous body, the individual flowers being well protected by peculiar peltate 
scales. 
The carpellate flower consists of a syncarpous pistil, made up of two to 
five carpels, and inclosing a structure which Lotsy calls a free central 
placenta, and once, presumably by inadvertence, a nucellus. In any event, 
the structure is the enlarged tip of the axis of the flower, which soon com- 
pletely fills the cavity of the ovary. At this stage one or more hypodermal 
cells of this axis tip enlarge, and without division are transformed into 
embryo sacs, one of which germinates in the usual way and passes through 
the ordinary ante-fertilization stages. The oe bk cola this axial structure 
with its embryo sacs as a placenta without ovules; but, even aside from the 
fact that a placenta is nothing ria ar the reviewer sees no reason 
for regarding the structure other than a terminal cauline ovule without 
integuments. A very large primary fs SE pre is formed in the 
usual way, but the author never observed a pollen tube, nor could he by 
repeated artificial pollination induce pollen tubes to develop. Under these 
circumstances Balanophora has learned to develop an embryo apogamously 
from the micropylar polar nucleus, but Rhopalocnemis is unable to do so, 
and hence has become practically a seedless plant. In just one case was 
Lotsy able to secure a few seeds, and even in them few stages of developing 
embryos were discovered, but enough to assure him that they had come from 
the egg, and probably a fertilized egg. 
The staminate flowers are no less singular, each one consisting of a single 
structure which by courtesy may be called a stamen, but is probably a 
transformed axial structure. In its enlarged extremity numerous imbedded 
sporangia are developed, centrally as well as peripherally. These sporangia 
do not organize definite wall layers as in ordinary angiosperms, and have no 
method of dehiscence other than the breaking down of the superficial tis- 
sues. It would seem to be the rarest chance, therefore, if a pollen grain 
should ever reach a stigma, which in fact has usually lost all power of retain- 
ing pollen grains. The pollen grains are completely organized, and the two 
male cells appear, both of them finally assuming, along with the tube nucleus, 
an elongated, vermiform appearance, which according to Lotsy is merely 
preparatory to disorganization. 
he twelve elaborate and handsomely colored plates present every detail 
observed, as well as the condition of the preparations. It is unfortunate that 
Dr. Lotsy writes in English, as his unfamiliarity with the language makes his 


