192 



BUDS AND BRANCHES 



forking of stems like the buckeye and jimson weed. By 

 looking down in the next lower fork you will probably 

 find the remains of a still older flower that terminated 

 the growth in that direction and forced the stem to con- 

 tinue its development by sending off branches on either 

 side, and so on, until the remains of the older flowers have 

 disappeared and the forking becomes obscured. Here the 

 oldest flower is lowest, not because, as in the raceme, the 

 axis has continued to grow beyond it, but because it 

 checked the further development of its own axis and has 

 been overtopped by new branches. 



277. Centrifugal Inflorescence. — 



When the older peduncles are length- 

 ened as described in Section 268, a 

 flat-topped cyme is produced, which 

 is distinguished from the corymb by 

 its centrifugal inflorescence ; that is, 

 the oldest flower of each cluster is in 

 the center, and the order of blossom- 

 ing proceeds from within toward the 

 circumference, as in the star-of- 

 Bethlehem, bitterweed {Helenumi 

 Flat-topped cyme of tenuifoUufii), etc. If the cyme is 

 much compounded, the inflorescence 

 becomes very complicated, and as many of the blossoms 

 never develop, will seem to have no regular order. 



363- 



278. The Coiled, or Scorpioid Cyme. — A peculiar form 

 of cyme is found in the coiled inflorescence of the pink- 

 root {Spigelia\ hehotrope, comfrey, etc. It occurs where 

 a cyme hke that represented in Figure 362 develops on 

 one side only. Its structure will be made clear by an in- 

 spection of Figures 365-367. 



279. Mixed Inflorescence. — We often find the two kinds 

 of inflorescence mixed in the same cluster. In a panicle 

 of buckeye, for example, the whole cluster is terminal with 



