716 
DUNCAN S. JOHNSON 
on which the results here given are primarily based. The ma- 
terial was fixed in chrom-acetic or in chrom-osmo-acetic. 
The flowers of Piper betel are formed in long terminal spikes. 
The individual spike may be made up partly or wholly of pistil- 
late flowers with occasional staminodia, wholly of staminate 
flowers, or, more rarely, almost wholly of hermaphrodite flowers 
(fig. 13). 
The mature staminate flowers are about two millimeters in 
diameter and five centimeters or more in length. The female and 
hermaphrodite spikes are often twelve millimeters thick when 
mature, and as long as the males. The number of flowers on a 
spike may be as great as 500 or 600. On either a male, female or 
hermaphrodite spike there may be from four to ten sterile bracts 
at the base. Above these, the lowermost fertile bracts, on the 
hermaphrodite spike, may bear hermaphrodite flowers just as 
often as male or female ones. The conditions at the tip of the 
spike are apparently similar, but the number of sterile bracts 
is more variable. Sometimes all but two or three of the terminal 
bracts have flowers in their axils, while, in other cases, twenty 
or more of the terminal bracts may be sterile. 
Each hermaphrodite flower consists of two stamens, which 
stand side by side, at the same level on the spike. The carpels, 
with the three or four stigmatic lobes, stand between them (figs. 
4, 5, 13, 44). Each flower is subtended by a bract, which is at 
first rather bracket-like with a short thin stalk (fig. 1). Later 
it becomes somewhat mushroom-shaped, with a thick stalk and 
a nearly circular terminal scale (figs. 34, 50). 
The development of the flower is initiated in the usual way, by 
the bulging out of the periblem to form the stamen. Each stamen 
soon shows a swollen sporogenous tip, flattened on the side toward 
its mate, and a short but distinct stalk below (figs. 3, 4). The 
archesporium of the stamen arises as usual from groups of peri- 
blem cells, and is already well differentiated when the carpellary 
ring is closing above the ovarian cavity (figs. 2, 4). 
When first clearly distinguishable, the primary archesporium 
of each microsporangium consists of a rounded group of 50 or 
more cells (figs. 8, 9). These divide later to form 1000 or more 
