110 



PRINCIPLES OF PLANT-TERATOLOGY. 



Mr. H. N. Ridley, F.R.S., late Director of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens, Singapore, who has great experience 

 and knowledge of palms, and to whose interesting 

 paper in the 6 Annals of Botany ' the reader is re- 

 f erred, informs the writer that the phenomenon is 

 probably due to proliferation of branches from the 

 axils of two uppermost scale-leaves which overtopped 



Fig. 31. — Passiflora. Proliferation of (normally suppressed) lateral 

 bud into a floAver. (From ' Gardeners' Chronicle.') 



and extinguished the apex of the main stem. He 

 says that he has never yet met with a case of true 

 dichotomy in the palms. This may be the correct 

 explanation, but if so, how is one to explain the basal 

 sheath which is common to the two lateral branches ? 

 If the sheaths, which probably represent the scale- 

 leaves in whose axils the lateral branches arose, have 

 become congenitally united, as is obviously the case, it 

 follows that the extinction of the apex of the main 

 stem by the lateral branches was also congenital, and 



