ABNORMAL "FLOWERS" OF HELENIUM AUTUMNALE, L. 947 



ovule ; it is also quite possible that it might develop adventitiously from 

 any part of the ovule ; but that is totally different from the idea of an 

 actual proliferation into a shoot of the ovule itself, this latter being, for 

 the reason above given, a morphological impossibility, and this in spite 

 of the assertions of Peyritsch and others to the contrary. 



What the exact course of events is in the particular case before us I am 

 unable to precisely determine from the longitudinal sections of the ovaries 

 which I made, but I interpret it according to the above description. 



Fig. 212 Capitulum showing Proliferation both or Disc- and Ray-florets, 



and also Spiral Torsion. 



In one ovary, a minute papilla, which might represent the abortive ovule, 

 was present at the side of the shoot at the bottom of the ovary. The 

 rudimentary shoot within the ovary of these scarcely modified disc-florets 

 is most probably identical with, and represents the earliest stage of, the leafy 

 shoot (fig. 210, h) proliferating out of the disc-florets at a more advanced 

 stage of the metamorphosis. This being so, it would* seem unlikely that 

 this leafy shoot (figs. 210, h and 212) could be anything else than a natural 

 prolongation of the ordinary but usually suppressed axis of the floret. 

 This view of the matter appears to me much more reasonable than the 



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