SUPPRESSION. £09 
gardener is shown in his attempt to discover and allow 
the plant to avail itself of the necessary requirements. 
We need here only allude to those instances in which 
provision is made for the production of flowers, and 
yet they are not produced. A good illustration of this 
is afforded by the feather-hy acinth, Hyacinthus comosus, 
in which the flowers are almost entirely suppressed, 
while the pedicels are inordinately increased in number, 
and their colour heightened. Something similar occurs 
in several allied species, and in Bowiea volubilis. The 
wig plant (hus Cotinus) affords another illustration of 
the same thing. Some tendrils also owe their appear- 
ance to the absence of flowers, being modified peduncles; 
proofs of this may frequently be met with in the case 
of the vine. 
In Lamium album I have seen one of the verticil- 
lasters on one side of the stem completely wanting, 
the adjacent leaf being, however, as fully formed as 
usual, 
General remarks on suppression,—On comparing together 
the various whorls of the flower in reference to sup- 
pression, and, it may be added, to atrophy, we find 
that these phenomena occur most rarely in the calyx, 
more frequently in the corolla, and very often in the 
sexual organs and seeds; hence it would seem as if the 
uppermost and most central organs, those most subject 
to pressure and latest in date of development—formed, 
that is, when the formative energies of the plant are 
most liable to be exhausted—are the most prone to be 
suppressed or arrested in their development. When 
the plants in which these occurrences happen most 
frequently are compared together, it may be seen that 
partial or entire suppression of the floral envelopes, 
calyx, and corolla, is far more commonly met with in 
the polypetalous and hypogynous groups than in the 
gamopetalous or epigynous series. 
The orders in which suppression (speaking generally) 
occurs most often as a teratological occurrence are the 

