366 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MAY 
small, while the lowest to the left has 6 equal-sized needles. This 
plant was slightly wounded a year ago last spring in connection 
with some work a student is doing along another line. It was 
not injured, however, in such a way as has been found in other 
cases to interfere with the number of needles. Again, several 
sister plants similarly injured did not show any reaction. It is 
probably better to consider this case a ‘“‘sport,” just as in the case 
of the 3-year-old plant, which had not been injured in any way 
so far as could be determined. In only one instance have I found 
younger plants than these with extra leaves in their fascicles; one 
seedling from a dozen or so of P. flexilis, which are now in their 
second year, has a fascicle with 6 needles. It is among the first 
formed fascicles of the seedling and at the top of the second season’s 
growth. 
It is more usual to find the spurs poorly developed when they 
first appear on the seedling, which is generally in its second year, 
though in some species they are delayed till the third year, or even 
later. This feature shows itself especially in species which have 
‘normally more than two leaves in the mature condition. For 
example, HempeL and WILHELM (11) refer to P. Cembra seedlings 
two years old as having trifoliar spurs, though the adult plant 1s 
normally quinquefoliate. I have also found trifoliar spurs common 
in P. Strobus when fascicles first appear on the seedling. Some 
spurs here are even bifoliar. In these reduced spurs the needles 
apparently come right out of the stem, the shoot axis, if any be 
present, being imbedded in the tissue. These fascicles also are 
usually devoid or almost devoid of bracts. In P. silvestris I found 
in 35 seedlings two years old only one example of a trifoliar spur- 
This was on the most vigorous of the plants. In plants a few years 
older, which had attained to considerable vigor of growth, I could 
scarcely find one without trifoliar spurs unless it was 4 weakling. 
At first the occurrence of these reduced fascicles on the seedling 
seemed entirely at variance with the view that the spur shoot of 
the pines is a branch. It is a feature, however, which is shared 
by other spur shoot-bearing plants. In Ginkgo, for example, when 
the spurs first appear, about the third year, they bear only 1-3 nil 
4 leaves, and gradually gain in number as they advance in age UP 
