BULBILS AND GEMM^. 123 



both co-operate with hereditary idiosyncrasies to oppugn the 

 production of seed, Nature still pursues her own course and 

 plants reproduce themselves with none the less regularity. And 

 of all the strange devices she has called into action to ensure 

 this end, none, perhaps, are of a more positive character than 

 bulbils among phanerogams, and gemmse among cryptogams. 

 Between them and the sexual organs the strongest sympathy 

 prevails, and whether the plant shall produce the one or the 

 other would seem a problem to be solved in the light of the 

 action of environment upon irritable protoplasm. 



Passing the more important British bulbil and gemmse- 

 bearing plants under review, the first notable one to suggest 

 itself will be the Celandine of our wayside, whose charms 

 Wordsworth has enshrined in one of his inimitable idylls. On 

 an open bank where the sun kisses them, the livelong day, one 

 may search the leaves in vain for bulbils, for the simple reason 

 that, under conditions so favourable to the development of seed, 

 bulbils are not required, and so none are formed. On the other 

 hand should the Celandine grow in a shady place the flowers 

 will be few and sickly and rarely capable of developing healthy 

 seed. The foliage, however, will be rank, and to compensate the 

 failure of seed, innumerable bulbils will be formed in the axils of 

 the leaves. For ti.ve years the writer has kept in view a small 

 patch of Celandine so situate as to be hidden from every direct 

 ray of sunlight. During this period he has never known a 

 single seed to be developed, while of bulbils he could gather 

 annually enough to fill a pint measure. 



Our eastern counties have a congener of the Lady's-Smock of 

 our own meadows, which, as its local name, — Bulbif erous Bitter- 

 cress, — signifies, bears bulbils in the axils of its leaves. By these 

 bulbils alone does the plant reproduce itself, for, interesting to 

 relate, although the plant flowers with comparative freedom, 

 seed are but rarely formed. Here, as with the Celandine, we see 

 that, defeated in her purpose of producing seed, Nature has 

 taken a shorter cut to the same end. The energy which should 

 have been spent on the maturation of the ovary and its ovules 

 has taken an entirely different e:xpression, and the germ-plasm, 

 if there be such a thing, obeys all the laws and fulfils all the 

 purposes of the somatic-plasm, and vice versd. 



