200 McDonald : Broad-leaved Wood Garlic. 



The scabredity of the pedicels may possibly be of some 

 mechanical assistance in the splitting of the spathe. The 

 flowers are built on the same plan as the lilies, each having a 

 perianth of six white petaloid segments, six stamens, and a 

 three-lobed and three-celled ovary. Nectar is secreted between 

 the rounded, bulging lobes of the ovary. Of the stamens, 

 the three inner are somewhat longer than the three outer, 

 and their anthers dehisce a little earlier. When the flower first 

 opens, the style is short, and the stigma immature, but by the 

 time the anthers of the outer and somewhat shorter stamens 

 have dehisced, the style will have grown, and the now matured 

 stigma brought well up to their level. 



If no insect be now forthcoming with pollen — as must often 

 be the case during inclement weather — the stigma touches an 

 anther in the same flower, and becomes self pollinated. 



Each compartment of the ovary contains two ovules, but 

 only one of them usually ripens into a seed, so that the ripe 

 capsule is usually but three-seeded. When ripe — towards the 

 end of July, a little after the leaves have decayed — the carpels 

 dehisce loculicidally to liberate the seeds. These are curved, 

 albuminous, with a small embryo, and have a dark crustaceous 

 testa. 



Observation of the process of germination of these seeds 

 might well serve as an introduction to the study of monocotyle- 

 donous seedlings in general, as they are somewhat easier to 

 understand than cereals such as oats, wheat, maize, etc., so 

 often described in text-books. The embryo of wood garlic 

 has only one cotyledon, this being somewhat cylindrical in 

 form. During germination (which usually begins towards the 

 end of October) this lengthens ; one end, that concealing the 

 rudimentary plumule and ending with the rudimentary radicle, 

 being pushed out of the seed. Growing downwards, it buries 

 the plumule a little distance below the surface of the soil. At 

 this stage nearer the seed a little slit will be noticed, it is through 

 this slit that the first leaves from the plumule will emerge after 

 growing up the short tube from the base. Even when pre- 

 viously straight, as shewn in fig. i, the portions of the cotyledon 

 above the slit, with the seed, becomes pushed to one side by 

 the developing scale and foliage leaves, as shewn in figs. 2, 3, 

 and 4. The other end of the cotyledon, the apex, is modified 

 to act as a sucking organ, and remains in the seed, absorbing 

 the albumen, and transferring it to the developing parts of the 



Naturalist 



