On the Different Views hitherto Proposed 



regarding the Morphology of the 



Flowers of Ginkgo biloba L. 



( Prelim inary note .) 



By 



Kenjiro Fujii, RigaJcusU. 



{Continued from No. 109, p. 15.) 



With PI. I. 



The most noteworthy recent work including the general morphological 

 questions of Ginkgo flower is Oelakovsky's tl Die Gymnospermen. Eine 

 morphologisch-phylogenetische Studie." His views in regard to the 

 morphology of Ginkgo flower are as follows: — The so-called seed-stalk 

 of Ginkgo is a shoot that arises, as in Araucariacea3, in the axil of a 

 bract and serves as the flower-axis, producing usually two, but some- 

 times four decussate carpels. Each carpel is greatly reduced, its terminal 

 portion being transformed, after the manner of Cycas, into a single 

 ovule, and this terminal portion is alone developed ; and very rarely 

 (that is, in flowers with four ovules) the stalk-like basal portions are 

 seen. There occur, however, two-ovuled (then stalked) divided carpels; 

 and this fact proves that the cup-shaped swelling at the base of the Ginkgo 

 ovule is only an annular fold of the carpel, corresponding to that 

 of the Cycas ovule (1) . Thus he considers the female flower as a real 

 single flower. Further he considers the entire brachyblast of Ginkgo as an 

 inflorescence, which is not closed to form a cone but open and diaphitic, 

 and in which the subtending leaf of a flower is a normal foliage leaf 

 (or a scaly leaf). He suggests also that the flowers of both sexes in 

 " Proconiferce " were much more alike (the female nearly like the many- 

 ovulec), decussate, pleocarpellary variation of Ginkgo) and similarly 



"Eeferat," But. Zeitung, Jahrgang 49 (1891), p. 719. 



