No. 632] SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION 283 



then that during a part of its life history the male elements pre- 

 dominated. This plant was a very prolific seed producer. 



Plant No. 3-3 was a very vigorous grower and it behaved like 

 plants Nos. 1 and 2 until the time of the appearance of male and 

 hermaphrodite flowers. The total number of male flowers when 

 compared with the total number of hermaphrodite flowers showed 

 that the tendency of the plant was towards moncecism. While 

 during most of its later history male and hermaphrodite flowers 

 appeared together, towards the end of the growing season (Octo- 

 ber 3-12) no hermaphrodite flowers were found and the plant 

 was decidedly monoecious. This plant started out as a female, 

 became polygamous and towards the end became monoecious. 

 Many seed were set. 



Plant No. 3-4 started out as a vigorous plant producing in the 

 beginning female flowers in abundance. About the same time 

 that the other plants were producing increasingly large numbers 

 of male and hermaphrodite flowers this plant produced very few, 

 10 males and 4 hermaphrodites. After that the plant began 

 noticeably to lose in vigor, the leaves began to curl up. Th^ 

 plant after that produced female flowers in abundance. These 

 however dried up very quickly and dropped off. The plant con- 

 tinued its sickly growth until it was killed by frost. 



Pistillody and staminody occurred very abundantly in the 

 flowers of the first three plants. This condition I have described 

 in detail in another paper (Mss.). Many of the hermaphrodite 

 flowers had only a single stamen. The plants also produced a 

 large number of three-carpelled female and hermaphrodite flow- 

 ers whereas a two-carpelled flower is the rule. 



While the number of plants is too small to warrant the draw-' 

 ing of any definite conclusions the following suggestive facts are 

 brought out. 



1. Sex is not a fixed condition in these forms of Mercurmlis 



2. A plant may change its sex during the progress of its life 



3. Continued study with larger numbers of such plants will 

 very likely show marked variations and sex intergradations and 

 that a strict category of sex for these forms is untenable, so that 

 the terms monoecious, gynomonoecious, gynodicecious, etc., can be 

 only arbitrarily employed. 



