PISTIL. 4.65 
take place, owing to the development of cellular tissue, 
or of woody matter, according as the fruit is succulent 
or woody. It sometimes happens that, owing to some 
disturbing causes, the changes that usually occur fail 
to do so; thus, the stone of plums is occasionally 
deficient, as in what are termed bladder-plums (fig. 
218) ; some of these, consisting merely of a thin bladder, 
are curiously like the pods of Colutea.' 
MM. Fournier and Bonnet’ describe a fruit of a 
Rubus, with perfectly dry fruits, like those of a Gewm, 
and this form was considered by Steudel to form a 
distmet species. It is, however, merely a variety in 
which the fruits have not become succulent.’ 
Schlechtendal describes* the ordinarily baccate fruit 
' See De Candolle, ‘Mem. Legum.,’ tab. 3, f. 1; Wyville Thomson, 
‘Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinb.,’ 1851, July 10th; Berkeley, ‘ Gardeners’ Chro- 
nicle,’ June 22nd, 1867, p. 654. A similar case is described by Dr. Robb, 
in Sir W. Hooker’s ‘Journal of Botany,’ 1841, vol. iii, p.99, with illustrative 
figures. The specimens there described were produced at New Bruns- 
wick, where plum trees flower very freely, but seldom produce ripe 
fruit. Dr. Robb’s account is as follows :—‘‘In the summer of 1839 I 
had an opportunity of watching the process of destruction among the 
plums, and it was as follows—Before or soon after the segments of the 
corolla had fallen off, the ovarium had become greenish yellow, soft, 
and flabby. As the fruit continued to increase in magnitude, its colour 
grew darker and of a more ruddy yellow, and at the end of a fortnight 
or three weeks the size of the abortive fruit rather exceeded that of a 
ripe walnut. In fact, an observer might imagine himself to be walking 
amongst trees laden with ripe apricots, but, like the fabled fruit on the 
banks of the Dead Sea, these plums, though tempting to the eye, when 
examined, were found to be hollow, containing air, and consisting only 
of a distended skin, insipid, and tasteless. By-and-bye a greenish 
mould is developed on the surface of the blighted fruit ; then the surface 
becomes black and shrivelled, and at the expiration of a month from 
the time of flowering the whole are rotten and decomposed. The flower 
appears about the beginning of June, and before August there is hardly 
a plum to be seen. It is curious that where two flower-stalks arise 
from one point of the branch, one will often go on to ripen in the 
normal way, while the other will become abortive, as above described.” 
In a specimen described by Mr. Berkeley there were two distinct 
ovules of equal size close to the apex of the fruit, connected with the 
base by vessels running down the walls. It should be observed that 
there is a worthless variety of plum, Kirke’s stoneless, or Sans Noyau, 
in which the kernel is not surrounded by any bony deposit. 
2 * Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr.,’ 1862, vol. ix, pp. 37 et 291. 
3 Carl Schimp, ‘Fl. Friburg,’ vii, p. 745; Hook, fil., ‘Journ. Linn. 
Soc.,’ vi, p. 9. 
+ *Tinnea,’ vol. v, 1830, p. 493. 
30 
