BUDS ON STEMS. 33 



the other three remain dormant. By the second year this shoot has probably 

 perished, and in that case the little reserve-buds sprout. Their development is not 

 infrequently simultaneous, so that here and there upon the tree we have tufts, each 

 consisting of four slender shoots — one withered and three green — which all radiate 

 from one point. If the three later shoots dry off at the ends, the buds on their basal 

 parts produce fresh shoots, and the bushes present a bristly and not very ornamental 

 appearance like besoms, especially when they are destitute of foliage. 



A curious development of reserve-buds may also be observed in Atraphaxis, a 

 ragged shrub indigenous to the Steppes of Southern Russia. Four buds are formed 

 simultaneously and in close proximity to one another in the axil of every foliage- 

 leaf. Of these a very small one is immediately above the insertion of the leaf; it 

 has a large one above, and two of medium size on either side of it. The large bud 

 becomes a leafy shoot and the small one a blossom. The two lateral buds are kept 

 in reserve unchanged during the second year, and in some circumstances during the 

 third also. If the shoot dies, the development of the lateral reserve-buds is pro- 

 ceeded with ; but as soon as they begin to sprout, the rudiments of fresh reserve- 

 buds are formed in the cortex to the right and left of those that are thus developing. 

 Here again, the ragged habit of growth of the shrub is connected with its peculiar 

 mode of bud-formation. The following case is also very common. Of a crowd of 

 axillary buds, placed either side by side or one upon another, one or more produce 

 flowering shoots. When the fruits generated in the flowers have dropped — an event 

 in this connection equivalent to the fall of the shoots which bear them — and the 

 spots of detachment are scarred over, the reserve-buds come into play for the first 

 time. In Spiraea crenata there is only one such reserve-bud; in the Dwarf 

 Almond {Amygdalus naria) and the Mahaleb (Prunus Mahaleb) there are two 

 or three. The diversity amongst plants in this respect is almost endless, but the 

 compass of this work does not admit of the subject being treated in greater detail. 

 Seeing, however, that the facts involved have not received due consideration on the 

 part of botanists, I should like to draw attention to the peculiar phenomena of 

 development in Buddleia, Rhodotypus, Fontanesia, Philadelphus, Rubus, Berheris, 

 Garagana, Alhagi, Lycium, and Ephedra, and also to point out that amongst 

 woody, shrubby and sufiruticose Steppe-plants, which are especially liable to frost- 

 bite and desiccation, many exhibit highly interesting characteristics in their 

 development of reserve-buds. 



In Willows we find a form of reserve-bud which differs from all the rest. It is 

 obvious at a glance that every bud on an annual shoot of a Willow is entirely 

 shrouded by a single scale shaped like a hood. This bud-scale originates in the 

 outer layers of the cortical tissue, and is, so to speak, a raised piece of the cortex 

 covering the rudimentary bud. The large bud wrapped in this scale possesses an 

 axis which has arisen laterally from the axis of the branch which bears the bud, and 

 the vessels and cells of thg wood may be followed uninterruptedly from the branch 

 to the base of the bud. But, close to the latter, we also notice some very small bud- 

 rudiments with no bundles running into them from the branch. They take their 



VOL. II. ^* 



