CLEISTOGAMOUS FLOWERS IN THE PANSIES ' 465 
when Mr. B. F. Bush early this season sent us some excellent 
fresh material of the plant from Courtney, Missouri. 
Wittrock? in his extensive and thorough work on the pansies 
makes reference to certain small-petalled flowers of V. arvensis 
Murr., which he -refers to as ‘‘Klandestina blommorna,’’ and 
intimates they are rather well known. A beautiful plate (Tafl. V. 
a, 70D. 70E). illustrates the fact of much reduced corolla in that 
plant. None of his drawings, however, show what might be 
called cleistogamous flowers in the true sense, 1. e., those having 
’ completely and permanently closed calyx and reduced number 
of stamens, these latter changed completely in shape of anthers 
and smaller pollen grains. Wittrock, moreover, does not refer 
to V. Rafinesqui1, Greene, as the American plant. Dr. Greene had 
showed this to be separate a year after and Wittrock had pre- 
sumably not taken the American plant, if he had seen it, to be 
different from the European. In fact his references to the origin 
of the plants rather precludes that any American specimens 
should have been referred to. Muhlenberg had given the American 
plant the name V. tenella a preoccupied one, but this reference is 
not even mentioned by Wittrock so that he must have been quite 
unaware of its identity, or of the distinctive character of the 
American plant as ever having been mentioned. 
Examination of Mr. Bush’s specimens revealed the fact that 
not only is the first flower of V. Rafinesqui really cleistogamous, 
but often the first flower of many of the later basal branches is 
decidedly apetalous also. The structure of these flowers is in no 
essential way different from those of the other violets. They 
show even a more pronounced tendency to have only two very 
much modified stamens, rather than five as in the caulescent 
members of the Lophion group. (e.g. V. or L. rostratum). ‘The 
sepals are rather unequal and always closed completely and 
permanently over the inner parts. The stamens are club-shaped 
as in the other group, much smaller, and each with two obovate 
anthers closely appressed to the characteristically recurved 
stigma. This latter is quite different in shapeeand structure from 
that of the petaliferous flowers. The style is shortened and the 
stigma reduced and recurved and held in the clasp of the two 
_stamen tips. The pollen germinates without, in most cases, leaving 
the anther cells and the tubes grow directly into the hollowed style. 
? Wittrock, V. B. Acta Horti Bergiani II, No. 1, p. 25, (1897). 
