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XXVI. Note on the Structure of the Anther. 

 By Daniel Oliver, F.L.S., Professor of Botany in University College, London. 



Read November 7th, 1861. 



A GERANIUM growing in my garden, apparently the Common Meadow Crane's-bill 

 {G. prcdense), has borne during the past autumn very numerous abnormal flowers. 

 Many of these exhibited the stamens in various degrees of retrogression, from tolerably 

 perfect, anther-bearing, to petaloid and anantherous forms. I examined some of the 

 flowers while they were fresh, and sketched a curious form of anther which they pre- 

 sented, but did not until late in the season (September) undertake a more complete 

 examination of a larger series ; and then, unfortmiately, the remaining ones were withered 

 and decaying. However, I was still able to make several drawings, exhibiting different 

 stages in the development of polliniferous lobes, and I now have the honour to lay some 

 of these before the Society. I am induced to this because these imperfect anthers seem 

 to me to afford some additional evidence upon an obscure point in the morphology of the 

 staminal leaf, especially interesting, being derived from an order seldom presenting gra- 

 duated series between the floral whorls, and also one in which the anthers are, normally, 

 versatile*. 



I am not aware that any clear view has been as yet generally accepted as to the mor- 

 phological import of the sutures or lines of dehiscence of the anther-cells. I may be 

 wrong in supposing the matter to be yet imperfectly understood ; but, at any rate, the 

 explanation of the structure of the anther, as given in the text-books on morphology 

 which I have seen, appears to me to be unsatisfactory, and I do not recollect to have met 

 with any evidence bearing upon the point derived from teratological facts, further than 

 that furnished by H. v. Mohl in his important essay, " Beobachtungen tiber die Um- 

 wandlung von Antheren in Carpelle"t, published in 1836; and by Neumann, " Ueber 

 Antherse anticse und posticse, und deren Uebergange in einander"{. M. Gris, in 

 'Annales des Sciences'§, describes and figures imperfect stamens from the " Bose verte" 

 which correspond very nearly indeed with those which I found in the Geranium ; l)ut 

 he does not enter upon the question of their morphological bearing further than merely 

 to point out the confirmation which they afford to the opinion entertained by botanists, 



* Mr. Masters, in his paper on Prolification (Linn. Trans, xxiii. 359), does not include Gerauiaceae among the 

 orders in which median prolification has been observed. In many of the flovrers of this Geranium the axis was pro- 

 longed beyond the three outer whorls of the flower, bearing, at a short interval, a serond flower. Tlie abnormal 

 stamens which I describe were formed, I believe, in both the outer and inner flower. 



t Bot. Zeit. 1836, pp. 513, 529, 545 ; Vermisch. Schrift. p. 28, and tab. i. ; also a translation in Ann. Sc. Nat. 

 se'r. 2. viii. p. 50. 



X Bot. Zeit. 1854, p. 353. § Ser. 4. ix. 76. 



VOL. XXIII. 8 M 



