THE BULBIFOEM SEEDS OF CERTAIN AMARYLLIDE.E. 89 



THE BULBIFORM SEEDS OF CERTAIN AMARYLLIDE^. 



By Dr. A. B. Rendle. 



Some discussion having arisen as to the true character of these 

 structures and their mode of germination it seemed worth while to look 

 up the literature of the subject. 



Paul Hermann, in his " Horti Academici Lugduno-Batavi Catalogus " 

 (1687), p. 684, mentions them in Crinum asiaticum (which he calls " Lilium 

 zeylanicum umbelliferum et bulbiferum "), as " semina fusca angulosa, quje 

 in bulbos grandescunt, conceptacula disrumpunt et germina protrudunt " ; 

 he says that the same "semina bulbacea " are to be observed in other 

 "liliaceous" plants. Hermann gives a good figure which is reduced 

 from an excellent drawing. No. 131 in his collection, now in the Depart- 

 ment of Botany, British Museum. t 



A hundred years later Gaertner, in his " De Fructibus " (I. p. 42, t. xiii.), 

 describes and figures fruits and seeds of Bulhine asiatica. There is some 

 doubt as to the plant to which Gaertner refers. The large number of 

 seeds in the ovary chambers precludes Grinum asiaticum, with which 

 Bulhine asiatica has been considered synonymous. He states that the 

 numerous flattened triquetrous seeds have a double integument, the outer 

 of which is thick and " coriaceo-spongiosum," and include a fleshy 

 endosperm and monocotyledonous embryo, which very soon grows out into 

 a terete bulb-bearing shoot, so that the ripe capsule is often filled with 

 germinating bulbils instead of seeds. 



F. K. Medicus, in his " Pflanzenphysiologie-Abhandlungen " (1803) 

 (II, p. 127), refers to a tuber-formation in the capsule of Crinum 

 hracteatum. 



In his " Prodromus " (1810), Robert Brown mentions the bulbiform 

 seeds of Crinum, Amaryllis, and Calostemma, which, he says (p. 297), 

 consist of a fleshy substance, often green outside, of a cellular nature and 

 'sWthout spiral vessels, which, inasmuch as it is organic and grows by intus- 

 susception, can hardly be called albumen ; within is a monocotyledonous 

 embryo. In a paper on some remarkable deviations from the usual 

 structure of seeds (" Trans. Linn. Soc." xii. p. 143), published in 1818, 

 he again refers to them, but says : " On a more careful inspection, of 

 those seeds at least in which the separation precedes the visible formation 

 of the embryo, I now find very distinct spiral vessels — these enter at the 

 umbilicus, ramify in a regular manner in the substance of the fleshy mass* 

 and appear to have a certain relation to the central cavity where the 

 embryo is afterwards formed." 



But a far more complete account of these structures was given 

 by a former Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, Richard 

 Anthony Salisbury. Salisbury's great desire was to publish a " Genera 

 Plantarum," but the work never appeared. At his death in 1829 he left a 

 large quantity of MSS. and beautifully executed drawings, which are now 

 in the Department of Botany at the British Museum, k fragment of the 

 " Genera " was printed in 1866; it comprises a considerable portion of 



