BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 



143 



APPENDIX TO SECTION YIII. 



Notes ox Leaves. 



1. Bardenhergia Comjjtonianahas a trifoliolate leaf, withtTvo stipels 

 to each leaflet, and tivo more at the base of the pair of leaflets, as 

 shown in the accompanying Fig. 24. But on the same plant I found 



Tig. 24. Trifoliolate leaf of Hardenbergia Comptoniana (Royal Gardens, 



Kew). 



some leaves that were like Fig. 25. This showed at once what the 

 stipels mean. They are abortive leaflets, there being no room for 

 them in the disposition of the leaf that -this Hardenlergia has now. 

 The original leaf was something of the nature of the accompanying 

 diagram, Fig. 26, and by the contraction of the petiolets all the 

 secondary leaflets became atrophied into stipels, and the leaf reduced 

 to a trifoliolate type instead of a bipinniate type. In many 

 instances not even stipels or glands are left to tell the tale of the 

 ancestral type, as in the opposites of (a), which have been entirely 



