580 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1138 



grams, the branches are shown necessarily as 

 alternate, although occurring on the plant in 

 a spiral. 



On the main fruiting branches, there appears 

 normally a single bloom at each node. In the 

 diagram of plant No. XIV., it is shown that 

 the blooming began on the third branch (first 

 fruiting branch) on July 18 and ended on the 

 eighteenth branch on August 30. The inter- 

 vals between the blooming of the first nodes 

 on consecutive branches varied somewhat, but 

 averaged about three days. The time between 

 blooms on any given branch was approximately 

 double the time between the " vertical " blooms, 

 as given in the preceding sentence. This 



water-saturation of which was maintained at 

 90 per cent. Plant No. XXIV. was grown in 

 soil the saturation of which was maintained 

 at 60 per cent, and shows even more than the 

 other this regularity in blooming. 



Conditions of environment, such as the 

 water content of the soil, the amount of avail- 

 able plant food, the day and night tempera- 

 tures, sunniness or cloudiness, theoretically 

 would influence the length of time which 

 exists between blooms and variations in these 

 should cause variations in blooming in plants 

 subjected to the varying conditions; there 

 exists also, no doubt, a difference in different 

 varieties as to the rapidity with which they 



Plant No. XfrCTV JVS^ 

 Fig. 2. Plant No. XXIV. 



relation was carried out with the other blooms 

 on any given branch. To put it in other words, 

 there is an apparent relation, indicated by the 

 broken arrows on the diagrams, between the 

 blooms on any one branch and those on the sec- 

 ond higher one, in that any given bloom has a 

 tendency to appear at the same time as the one 

 on the second higher branch, one node nearer 

 to the main stalk. 



This regularity occurred on plants of the 

 Cleveland Big Boll variety, grown in potom- 

 eters. Plant No. XIV. was grown in soil the 



bloom, but granting this, it is likely that the 

 relation which is pointed out would even then 

 very likely hold true. 



As stated, these diagrams are of the two 

 plants which show the regularity to the great- 

 est degree. They show also many instances 

 in which the bloom appeared not on the same 

 day, but one day later than on the second 

 branch above and one node nearer to the main 

 stalk. Then there are many examples showing 

 great irregularity. It would seem that this 

 points to a very interesting field of study on 



