Polyembryony in Sarcococca ruscifolia, Stapf. 
BY 
. MATTHEW YOUNG ORR, 
Assistant in Laboratory, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. 
With two figures in the text. 
THE number of Angiosperms in which Polyembryony has ap- 
peared as an occasional or habitual feature of their reproductive 
processes is comparatively small, and present-day botanical 
literature is singularly barren of further additions to the list. 
A new case of polyembryony is therefore of interest, more par- 
ticularly if it be found in a Family which has not previously 
furnished any example of the phenomonon. Such a case has — 
recently come to light in the embryogeny of Sarcococca, and, so 
far as is known to the writer, this is the first mention of a de- 
parture from the normal mode of embryo-formation in a member 
of the Buxaceae. 
While examining fruits of Sarcococca ruscifolia, which had been 
brought to the Botanic Garden Laboratory from an estate in East 
Lothian, it was discovered that fully one half of the ripe seeds 
contained more than one embryo, there being usually, in each 
seed, two fully-formed embryos with radicle, plumule and cotyle- 
dons, and a varying number of minute, immature embryos in 
various stages of development. 
Fic. 1.—Two embryos from a seed of Sarcococca ruscifolia. X 10. 
The only apparent distinction between the two mature embryos 
taken from any one of these seeds was a difference in size, and it 
(Notes, R.B.G., Edin., No. LXVII, April 1923.] 
