56 



THE PEANUT— THE UNPREDICTABLE LEGUME 



to the geocarpic habit of the plant. He noted that the pegs and mature 

 fruits are also concentrated at the lower nodes. In more suitable climates 

 than that of Breslau where Richter worked, flowering and peg formation 

 occur much farther up the stem than he suspected, flowers appearing 

 even at the last visible node. He was essentially correct, however, in say- 

 ing that peg production is suppressed at the upper nodes. 



The daily production of flowers during the life of the peanut plant 

 has been described by Shibuya (65), Bouffil (13), and Smith (66). 

 Bouffil illustrated frequencies of flower production by days for five con- 

 secutive seasons. He compared his frequency distributions with the distri- 

 bution given by Shibuya for Formosa as well as with a distribution from 

 material grown in the neighborhood of Paris. All of his graphs and those 

 from Shibuya's data are similar. Smith found also that flower-frequency 

 curves obtained during three seasons from North Carolina material 

 closely resembled those of Bouffil. Careful records of hours of sunlight 

 and amounts of rainfall were available to Bouffil, temperature being vir- 

 tually constant in Senegal, and he stated that the pattern of flowering was 

 not influenced by meteorological conditions. In the data from the Paris 

 area the number of flowers was much reduced but the general pattern was 

 not altered. 



Bouffil's analysis of flowering frequency led him to describe four 

 stages in the progression of flowering: (1) slow increase, (2) fast in- 

 crease, (3) flowering peak, and (4) decline of flowering. Smith described 

 the onset of flowering as gradual with flower production beginning to 

 accelerate after two to three weeks. Peak production was reached four to 

 six weeks after the first flowers appeared, the time depending upon variety ; 

 then flowering decreased at approximately the same rates as the increases 

 occurred. In a Spanish strain, two-thirds of the flowers were produced 

 during a one month period beginning six weeks after planting ; in a Vir- 

 ginia runner, four-fifths of the flowers were produced during the third 

 month after planting (figure 16) . 



The following fertility coefficients for Bouffil's line 24-11 are based 

 on means of 90, 89, and 64 plants, respectively, grown at the M'Bambey 

 Station, Senegal. 



