176 BOTANICAL GAZETTE 
ANEMARRHENA ASPHODELOIDES has been studied with much inter 
est because Miss SARGANT (11, 12) considers that the vascular system 
of the seedling represents a primitive type. The theory of this author 
considers chiefly the cotyledonary traces and their insertion; it is 
natural to inquire whether the stele of the older seedling shows 
features which may be regarded as primitive. The stele possesses a 
medulla below the exit of the two cotyledonary traces; these subtend 
wide gaps through which the cortical and medullary parenchyma 
freely communicate; the traces of the second leaf are three in number, 
and before they emerge medullary bundles have made their appear- 
ance. Except in the root an endodermis cannot be identified. This — 
fact, and the early appearance of medullary strands, and the presence — 
of a pith in the hypocotyl I do not regard as primitive characters, 
though it is evident that a plant may retain some ancestral features 
and lose others, so that the disposition of the cotyledonary strands 
may still represent an ancestral type. 
Melanthoideae.—Giortosa superBa—The peculiar habit of 
the subterranean portion of the stem has been fully described by 
QUEVA (9), and sufficiently accounts for the complications found in 
the lower part of its stele ; In the upper internodes of the seedling, 
however, the vascular strands are arranged in a simple ring, and - 
certain of the strands turn outward as leaf traces after anastomosing =| 
with adjacent members of the ring. 
Uvoraria GRANDIFLORA.—At the point of departure of the coty- 
ledonary trace a wide gap is left in the vascular tissues; here funda 
mental tissue enters and extends downward into the hypocotyl for @ 
short distance as well as upward. Fig. 24 shows the stele at level of 
the cotyledonary gap; the cotyledonary trace is not visible because By 
bends downward after leaving the stele; though no distinct phloeoterma 
is visible, the small-celled tissue surrounding the stele certainly an 
not seem to be continuous across the gap, as it is in some of the adult 
stems already described. At one place in the stele it will be nouce® — 
that the xylem surrounds a mass of phloem, so that the concentne 
bundles begin to show themselves at this early stage; they me : 
the whole vascular ring above the point of exit of the secon 
trace; some of them then turn inward and run in the medulla, =i > 
here they soon become collateral. 
sii 
