XXXVIII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE EMBRYOGENY 
OF NELUMBO. 
Fett. Teron: 
INTRODUCTION. 
The peculiar and seemingly inconsistent characters of /Ve- 
lumbo have given rise to a variety of opinions regarding its 
proper systematic position and in attempts to settle the points in 
dispute the plant has again and again been subjected to careful 
investigation, the recorded observations forming a considerable 
literature. 
In anatomy the plant seems to conform more nearly to the 
type of the Monocotyledons, as in fact do all the Nymphezacee, 
the vascular bundles being closed and irregularly placed through 
the stem. On the other hand the large peltate leaves with their 
reticulate venation are perhaps more suggestive of a dicoty- 
ledonous plant, while the flowers might easily belong to one of 
either class. Thus far can investigators agree, but the anoma- 
lous character of the fruit has made it a subject for controversy, 
and the interpretations offered are numerous and at great vari- 
ance. Briefly stated the fruit presents the following peculiari- 
ties. Each carpel of the apocarpous gyncecium contains a 
single ovule and matures as a spherical one-seeded fruit. The 
thick sclerenchymatous pericarp lined by the thin testa is closely 
filled by two large white fleshy bodies hemispherical in shape 
and joined to each other at the stigmatic end of the pericarp. 
In an elongated oval chamber formed by opposed concavities 
in the inner surfaces of these fleshy bodies, and attached to 
them at their point of continuity is a green structure—a stem 
bearing a large and small leaf and an apical bud containing 
two more. The free leaves are fully formed and already green 
and together with the stem are enclosed by a thin delicate 
structureless membrane. Imbedded in the common tissue of 
the two fleshy bodies opposite the insertion of the stem of the 
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