334. HETEROMORPHY. 
Stackhousia juncea, according to Clarke, has mixed 
with its perfect flowers a number of apetalous blossoms 
destitute of anthers.’ 
This peculiarity is well exemplified in the tribe 
Gaudichaudiee of the order Malpighiacee. <A. de 
Jussieu, in his monograph, speaks of these flowers as 
being very small, green, destitute of petals, or nearly 
so, with a single, generally imperfect anther; the car- 
pels also are more or less imperfect, but not sufficiently 
so to prevent some seeds from being formed. A similar 
production of imperfect flowers has been noticed in 
many other orders, e.g. Violacee, Campanulacee, &e. 
In some cases these supplementary blossoms are more 
fertile and prolific in good seeds than are the normally 
constructed flowers. M. Durieu de Maisonneuve alludes 
to a case where flowers of this description are produced 
below the surface of the ground. The plant in question 
is Scrophularia arguta, and it appears that towards the 
end of the summer the lowest branches springing from 
the stem bend downwards, and penetrate the soil; the 
branches immediately above the lowest ones also bend 
downwards, but do not always enter the earth. These 
branches bear fertile flowers: those which are com- 
pletely below the soil are completely destitute of 
petals; those which are on the surface have a four-lobed 
corolla whose divisions are nearly equal, like those of 
Veronica.’ 
To Sprengel, and specially to Darwin, physiologists 
are indebted for the demonstration of the relation of 
di- and trimorphic flowers to fertilisation. In certain 
genera of orchids, such as Catasetum, &c., flowers of 
such different form are produced that botanists, with- 
out hesitation, considered them as belonging to different 
genera, until the fact of their occasional production 
on the same plant showed that they were not of even 
specific importance. It was reserved for Mr. Darwin 
to show experimentally that these very different flowers 
1* A New Arrangement of Phenog. Plants,’ p. 36. 
2 «Bull. Soe. Bot. France,’ 1856, t. i, p. 569. 
