~ 
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT 
AND THE SEXUAL CONDITION IN PLANTS. 
BY JOHN STOCKTON-HOUGH, M.D. 
— 00an 
InprAn Corn (Zea Mays) is sexually monecious, that is, the 
male and female flowers are normally on different parts of the same 
plant. Occasionally, however, the female flowers appear among 
the male flowers, on the same raceme, and more rarely, the male 
flowers appear on the spike (ear) among the female flowers, and 
still more rarely, they are hermaphroditic. 
Other observers reverse the order of rarity of these anomalies 
and say that ‘male flowers sometimes appear amongst the female 
flowers, and Mr. J. Scott has lately observed the rarer case of 
female flowers on a true male panicle, and likewise hermaphrodite 
flowers.” * 
The writer collected and examined nearly a hundred specimens 
of these anomalies (female flowers among the males), during the 
last autumn (1872) with a view of determining the relationship 
between the proportion or excess of either sexual element and the 
condition of development of the plants bearing such anomalous 
flowers. 
stalks bearing female flowers among the males were almost 
without exception “ suckers,” that is, branches coming off from the 
main stalks at the nodes among the adventitious roots just below 
the surface of the ground. The junction of one of these “ suck- 
ers” with the-stalk on which it is a parasite, so to speak, is greatly 
constricted, and the point of attachment is scarcely more than an 
eighth of an inch across. There are few, if any, serviceable ad- 
ventitious roots to these suckers, so the stalk derives its nourish- 
ment wholly from the trunk to which it is joined, and as a conse- 
uence such stalks are short, slim and pale in color, having 
abridged internodes, or in other words, they are undeveloped. A 
wet season, injury to the main stalk, shady locations and the 
borders of fields, seem to favor their production. 
_ * Darwin, Variations in Animals and Plants under Domestication, out of Trans. of 
Botan. Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. viii, p. 60 
(19) 
