PROLIFICATION OF THE FLOWER. 145 
kind the detached sepal is placed below the others, 
thus approximating, in position as well as in function, 
to the bracts. In some of the instances of proliferous 
pears, on which I shall have occasion to comment, the 
sepals are described as sharing in the succulent cha- 
racter of the fruit. 
The petals, under such circumstances, often exist 
in the guise of sepals or of small leaves ; and instances 
are recorded wherein the place of the calyx and corolla 
was supplied by a succession of overlapping green 
scales, from the axils of which the new buds arose. 
M. Germain de Saint Pierre records such a case in 
Trifolium repens, wherein the calyx and corolla were 
replaced by overlapping scales, in the axils of each one 
of which arose a flower; above there was a row of 
stamens, and in the centre a pistil in the guise of a 
trifohiate leaf." Such instances seem to afford an ex- 
treme degree of a more common change, viz., the 
diminished size and contracted appearance of the 
sepals and petals when affected with axillary prolifica- 
tion. They have also a close relationship to such 
developments as we see in the wheat-ear carnation, 
in certain species of the genus Mesa and others, 
wherein the calyx is repeated over and again, to 
the partial or complete suppression of the other 
parts of the flower. All these cases may be in part 
explained by the operation of the principle of compen- 
sation. 
So far as the andrecium is concerned, the stamens 
either remain unaltered, or they are present in a more 
or less petal-like condition; but it far more frequently 
happens that the stamens are entirely suppressed, the 
adventitious bud supplying their place; thus was it in 
the Dianthus represented in the adjoming woodcut, fig. 
66, where the stamens were entirely absent, and their 
places supplied by flower-bearing branches. This 
Dianthus has the more interest from its similarity to 
the one described by Goethe, Metam. der Pflanzen. 
1 «Bull. Soe. Bot. Fr.,’ tom. iii, 1856, p. 479. 
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