London Horticultural Society and Garden. 



203 



from leaves, they are each or all liable to revert to the form of ordinary leaves, 

 if any accidental circumstance occurs to interfere with their developement 

 as floral organs. In such instances the centre of the flower will often extend 

 itself into a branch clothed with leaves, just as a leaf-bud does, and the parts 

 whose destination has been altered from that of floral organs to leaves will, 

 like ordinary leaves, produce other buds in their axils. 



In the case of Mr. Williams's plant the 5 sepals were unchanged, the 5 petals 

 were converted into dull greenish purple, serrated, simple leaves, the 10 stamens 

 remained unaltered, and the centre, which had been intended for a pistil com- 

 posed of 5 carpels, was lengthened into a short 

 branch bearing a circle of 5 ovate, dull brownish 

 red, toothleted, hairy, glandular leaves. 



The>nnexed cut, {Jig. 37.) represents the ap- 

 pearance of one of these flowers when magnified, 

 (a, the sepals; b, the altered petals; c, the sta- 

 mens ; d, the lengthened centre, surmounted by 

 the 5 carpels changed to leaves.) 



In a subsequent communication, Mr. Williams 

 stated that, upon reexamining the plant from _^ 

 which the flower just described had been taken, he Q 

 found an instance where a kind of pentapetaloid 

 flower took the situation which the fruit would 

 have found, had the structure been of the usual 

 kind. In the centre of this flower a head had 

 formed, and shot out, with a second similarly 

 shaped green flower having yet another shoot from 

 its centre, and above this a second flower, exactly 

 resembling the first, having five stamens and anthers, with an appearance, of 

 pollen contained in them. 



It happened upon this occasion, that these singular facts were illustrated by 

 the exhibition of a specimen of common white clover (TYifolium repens), in 

 which all the parts of all the flowers were converted into green trifoliate leaves. 

 The cases of pears, and apples, in which one fruit grows out of another, were 



mentioned as other analogous instances, and reference was made to a very 

 extraordinary malformation in the potato (Jigs. 38, 39.), specimens of which 

 had been sent to the Society by the late president. 



p 2 



