BOTANICAL SUBJECTS, 2oi 



The Ovule. 



M. Eiig. Warming, in the " Annales des He. Nat.," tome v., 

 vi., Bot., p. 177 (1878), gives 91 pages of discussion on the ovule. 

 He closes his article by saying, " I should l)e happy if this memoir 

 should enable us to admit in a general way the theory of 

 Brongniart, the only admissible and true one. If I am to-day 

 con\-inced of it, it is due to the ingenious botanist slave — Ladislao 

 Celakovsky." 



At the beginning of his article, Warming gives what Ad. 

 Brougniart wrote in 1844. It is this: "Then there are two 

 different origins for ovules — one in the great majority of phanero- 

 gams, in which the ovules come from the edge of the carj^oj^hyls, 

 and representing lobes or teeth of those carpophyls ; the other 

 belonging to only a small number of families such as the 

 Primulace^e, Myrsinjee, Theophrastea?, and probably the Santa- 

 lacege, in which the ovules correspond to distinct leaves 'borne on 

 the prolongation of the floral axis. The nucleus is a new pro- 

 duction — a cellular nipple developed on the superior surface of 

 this lobe (or tooth) of the leaf, and in the bottom of the cavitv 

 which it has formed." 



It so happens that each tooth of almost any leaf in its young 

 stage has a nipple or gland, which, later on, atrophies and 

 either falls off or hardens in a horny point. 



In ordinary language, the nucleus means the " kernel " of the 

 seed, and this Brongniart believed to be a 7i€w production. 

 Warming endorsed this view. 



In Chapter IV., *'De rO\i]le," Warming comes to this 

 conclusion : — 



" Few organs have had more varied interpretations than the 

 ovule. According to Schleiden, St. Hilaire, Braun, Strasburger, 

 Wigand, Eichler, &c. consider it a bud, on which every integu- 

 ment* would be an independent leaf, or a disc (Schacht, Endlicher, 

 Unger) ; others, as an organ of leafy nature, in which the funicle 

 only (Rossmann), or the funicle and the integuments, would be an 

 ovular leaflet, or the lobe of a leaf. Then oi)inions diverge. 



* The integument might be regarded as the vayina of an undeveloped 

 leaf, and the disc as a fusion of leaf or stamen nipples. 



