PROLIFERATION. 



7 



themselves again branched in the same way ; the 

 branches, representing pedicels, are filamentous, and 

 both these and the numerous bracts are purplish in 

 colour, and formed at the expense of flowers, which 

 are entirely absent. This, therefore, is a structure 

 intermediate between a reproductive and a vegetative 

 proliferation. Fig. 61 shows a rose-flower proliferated 

 to form an inflorescence of two flowers. 



In the sedge {Gar ex glauca) the exceedingly re- 

 duced axis of the " utricle " has been described as 

 produced into a " spike," either male, female, or 

 androgynous. 



Schmitz observed, in the abnormal Euphorbia pre- 

 viously referred to, some of the axillary " stamens " 

 proliferating into complex inflorescences. 



We come next to the phenomenon of proliferation 

 into a flower. 



It is not uncommon for the cone of Equisetum to 

 form a second cone above the first. 



The uni- or biovulate axis of the maidenhair tree 

 {Ginkgo biloha) may proliferate in the sense that it 

 bears a greater number of ovules which then become 

 stalked and may be spirally arranged. 



In Gephalotaxus, flowers on a tree in Windsor Park 

 were observed which, instead of forming merely the 

 two normal ovules, one on each side of the rudimentary 

 apex, had proliferated slightly so as to form a third 

 ovule at a higher level ; or, the two normal ovules 

 being replaced by tiny leaves, a second pair of ovules 

 decussating with these had developed above. 



A precisely similar flower may be formed at a vary- 

 ing distance above the first, as in the rose (PI. XXVIII, 

 fig. 4), Ranunculus, and Trollius. Or, this pheno- 

 menon may be extended and the proliferation repeated 

 over and over again, so that a number of flowers may 

 be formed one above the other, as in a wallflower in 

 which every flower, which was unusually small and 

 provided with calyx and corolla only, had proliferated 

 from five to seven times, as indicated by the articula- 



