DR. MASTERS — DOUBLE FLOWERS OE PRIMULA SINENSIS. 203 



as no such bud is to be seen. On tracing the vascular cords up the 

 tube of the corolla, they may be seen to divide, one division pro- 

 ceeding into the lobes of the primary petal, the other into the 

 secondary petals ; hence I should be inclined to attribute the 

 formation of these latter organs (in these particular flowers) not 

 to prolification, nor to substitution of petals for stamens (petalody), 

 but to an exuberant growth of the primary petals, similar to 

 what one not unfrequently sees in Cabbage-leaves, or Begonias, 

 and such as I have seen in the Hazel and some other plants. The 

 French botanists would attribute the formation to chorisis, a term 

 which, in this case at least, would convey a false idea that the 

 supernumerary organs were equivalent to so many lamina? split off 

 from the original petals, instead of being excrescences, so to speak, 

 from them. These adventitious petals might, at first sight, be 

 supposed to represent the faucial scales of Samolus ; but the latter 

 alternate with the true petals and with stamens. 



The stamens were, for the most part, absent from the flowers 

 that I examined ; but in one or two instances, as already men- 

 tioned, they were present in their ordinary guise, and were ad- 

 herent to the front of the supernumerary petals. 



The condition of the pistil was different in different flowers, but 

 in all noteworthy. The simplest appearance that it presented was 

 that of a foliaceous capsule open at the top, as in Reseda, and par- 

 tially divided into its component carpellary leaves, the styles and 

 stigmata being completely detached from one another. At the 

 bottom stood up the usual free central placenta, studded over with 

 ovules ; these latter, however, were not confined to the placenta, 

 but occurred on the inner surface of the carpellary leaves. In 

 other cases the capsule was in form as just described, but, in place 

 of being foliaceous, it was distintly petaloid, thus entirely re- 

 sembling the corolla in all save the presence of ovules. 



A third class of cases is more complex and difficult of explana- 

 tion: within a foliaceous or petaloid pistil, such as those just 

 alluded to, occurred a second pistil, sometimes closed, at other 

 times open at the top — sometimes foliaceous, at other times peta- 

 loid, — in one flower adherent to the outer pistil, in another per- 

 fectly detached from it — now with ovules on its parietes, while in 

 other cases those bodies were strictly confined to the usual free 

 central placenta ; this latter organ, again, was either partially ad- 

 herent to the walls of the pistil or wholly detached from them. 



The puzzle is, to explain the existence of this double pistillary 

 series. The adventitious petals may be excrescences from the pri- 



