HABITS OF WATERLILY SEEDLINGS 293 
BRASENIA SCHREBERI. 
Seedlings of Brasenia in great numbers were studied and 
found to have the same mode of germination as those of Nym- 
phaea. [Plate XIVa.| The following variations due to environ- 
ment were observed. Seeds [S] embedded in mud often as much 
as four to six inches break open by protrusion of the cotyledon 
petioles carrying out the axil, from which the epicotyl arises as 
a long thread-like growth. The more or less delayed primary 
root passes downward [PR]. The epicotyl [EP] when reaching 
the surface of the mud or bottom of the pond, expands and pro- 
duces a cluster of leaves of varying size but with the exception 
of the first few, of about the same shape. The cotyledons are 
permanently intraseminal and seem to serve no purpose except 
to suffer the transfer of food collected in them, to the seedling 
especially to the primary root and epicotyl until it has produced 
leaves. While so doing the cotyledons gradually wither away. 
All the submerged leaves are thin, and filmy when dried, and 
histologically nearly as in Nymphaea. The first blade-bearing 
leaf is narrowly oblong and the petiole is not peltately inserted, 
but at the margin of one end. ‘The subsequent leaves are excen- 
trically peltate the earlier ones just slightly intra-marginally 
inserted. ‘The size of the leaves beneath the water depends on 
the depth of submersion, the plants in deep water bearing very 
large ones. After about 6-9 of these thin aquatic leaves have 
appeared, there arises a single smaller perfectly elliptical floating 
one [W] which is thick in texture and except for the absence ol 
slimy exudation on the lower face characteristic of mature floating 
foliage and petiole, is quite a miniature of the older leaves. The 
stalk is very long, whereas the petioles of leaves of older plants 
are short, and the whole plant, stem and leaf cluster of maturer 
specimens arise to the surface of the water. The plants continue 
a succession of these long stalked floating leaves until a stem 
rises from the rooting plantlet, when the newly developed foliage 
begins to produce the slimy covering of the young immersed 
parts. Brasenia seeds not embedded in mud at the bottom, ger- 
minate without growing an elongated epicotyl, the seedling appear- 
ing to come almost directly from the axils of the cotyledons. It 
is not likely that seeds of this plant or Nymphaea would develop 
on or in mud above the water line. Such specimens could not be 
