METAMORPHOSIS. 



207 



become increased in numbers thereby. In some of 

 the flowers of Linaria we see a transitional stage 

 to unisexuality, but the carpels are only partially 

 staminoid. 



The following are examples of remarkable trans- 

 formations of ovules. Agardh noticed that in an open 

 ovary of a double hyacinth, side by side with the 

 ovules, anthers were borne on the same placenta. 

 Masters saw and figured in otherwise perfectly normal 

 and closed ovaries of Bseclcea diosmsefolia (Myrtacese), 

 which in most instances were unilocular, i. e. devoid of 

 partition-walls, that ovules were completely absent 

 and replaced by numbers of perfect stamens (occa- 

 sionally imperfect ones) attached in all cases to the 

 wall of the ovary (PI. XLIX, fig. 8). We must 

 suppose that here the ovules (segments of a leaf) 

 were congenitally metamorphosed into stamens (entire 

 leaves). The same interpretation may be placed 

 upon Agardh's case. There is nothing really remark- 

 able in a phenomenon of this kind, for a leaflet may 

 exhibit all the characteristics, even as to size and 

 organization, of the entire leaf of which it is a part, 

 hence it would be no more wonderful for an ovule to 

 change into a stamen than into a well-organized 

 leaflet.* 



Many instances are known of female flowers becom- 

 ing male by the transformation of the carpels into 

 stamens, as for example in several species of willow 

 (Salix), where usually the two carpels are replaced by 

 two stamens. Wigand saw flowers of S, pseudo-baby- 

 lonica in which the carpels were replaced by three 

 stamens; and transitional organs, partly male and 

 partly female, also occurred in some flowers. Origin- 

 ally, Salix must have possessed more than two carpels 

 (an extra number is a frequent abnormality in Populus), 



* Good examples of this kind of change are afforded by occasional leaflets 

 of the tomato-leaf, which are not only organized exactly as the entire leaf 

 itself, but sometimes produce an axillary bud. Also by the completely 

 organized carpel borne as one of the pinnae of a carpelloid stamen, which 

 was described and figured by Masters. 



