42, ADHESION. 
times the outermost, at other times the innermost 
disappear." 
Occasionally there appears to be, as it were, a 
transference of the parts of one flower to another. 
One of the simplest and most intelligible cases of this 
kind is recorded by Wigand in the ‘ Flora’ for 1856, 
in a compound flower of Polygonatwm anceps, in which 
within a twelve-parted perianth there were twelve 
stamens and two pistils, one four-celled, the other two- 
celled; hence it would appear as if a carpel belonging 
to one flower had become united to those constituting 
the pistil of the adjacent one. Among Orchids this 
fusion of some of the elements of different flowers, 
together with the suppression of others, is carried to 
such an extent as to render the real structure 
dificult to decipher. Sometimes flowers of Ophrys 
aranifera, at first sight seemimg normal as to the 
number, and almost so as regards the arrangement 
of their parts, have yet, on examination, proved to be 
the result of a confluence of two flowers. Mr. Mog- 
eridge has observed similar phenomena in the same 
species at Mentone. 
Sometimes the fusion affects flowers belonging to 
different branches of the same inflorescence, as in 
Centranthus ruber, described by Buchenau, ‘ Flora,’ 1857, 
p- 293, and even a blossom of one generation of axes 
may be united with a flower belonging to another 
generation. Thus M. Michalet® speaks of a case 
wherein the terminal flower of Betonica alopecwros was 
affected with Peloria, and fused with an adjacent one 
belonging to a secondary axis of inflorescence, and not 
yet expanded. This latter flower had no calyx, but in 
its place were three bracts, surrounding the corolla; this 
again was united to the calyx of the terminal bloom 
in a most singular manner, the limb of the corolla 
and that of the calyx being so joined one to the other 
1 C. Morren, ‘ Bull. Acad. Belg.,’ vol. xv (Fuchsia, p. 89); vol. xviii, 
p. 591, (Lobelia, p. 142); vol. xix, p. 352; vol. xx, p. 4. 
2 * Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr.,’ vol. vii, p. 625. 
