BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 185 



neither those of U. vulgaris, nor those of U. minor, can in any 

 way be considered leaves more than roots except by way of 

 " courtesy " ! If the appendages of the Utricularias are leaves, 

 these plants are rootless. The so-called stem is a continuation of 

 them, as the stem of any other plant is a continuation of its root. 

 Moreover, they have no semblance of any phyllotaxis whatever ; 

 and the stem of U. intermedia, as delineated by Syme, shows first 

 leaf-like appendages, then root -like appendages with bladders, and 

 then again leaf -like appendages. So that in this same plant the 

 leaf-like appendages and the root-like a^jpendages are inter- 

 changeable. Lindley, in his "Veg. Kingd.," says they "resemble 

 roots.*' And this is what Bentham and Hooker, " Genera 

 plantarum," say of Utricularia (vol. ii., p. 988). 



" In his speciebus radicula (brevissima crassa) iners remanet, 

 et planta adulta omnino arhiza et, squamellis minutis v. foliis 

 primordialibus evanescentibus exceptis, aphylla, nisi pro foliis 

 habendi sint utriculi. Eami submersi capillaceo — multisecti a 

 variis auctoribus perperam ut ^ddetur nunc pro foliis nunc pro 

 radicibus descripti sunt." 



In plain English this means that they are either roots or 

 leaves, according to one's conventional bias. The leaves or roots 

 of the Utricularias, in my opinion, strongly support, if they do 

 not prove, the view I have taken in the foregoing pages, viz., that 

 leaves are aerial roots, and roots underground leaves. 



There are other plants which bear corpuscles analogous to 

 those of the leguminiferag, but which are very distant from them. 

 Syme in his "Brit. Bot.," pi. I760,shows Poa annua ^Yith. corpuscles 

 on its roots. As he does not allude to them in the text, it is 

 impossible to say what they may mean. They may be remnants 

 of floats in some ancestral water-plant, as he says this Poa can 

 only be advantageously grown in " damp pastures." There are 

 many grasses which are aquatic, or semi-aquatic, such as Catabrosa, 

 Glyceria, Oryza, Arundo, and others, with their near relatives 

 sedges, and Irids. 



It should not be forgotten that in the life of any group of 

 plants time as a factor in variation may have been almost 

 unlimited. A grass may have been originally a floating plant, 

 it may have crept out of the water and up a mountain, changing 

 its character and losing its floats ; then by a subsidence of the 

 ground it may have returned to water, and never have re-acquired 



