300 WILLIS : MORPHOLOGY OF THE PODOSTEMACEÆ 
represented in Plates V. and VI. (left side). The former 
especially gives an excellent representation of the habit of 
the mature plant. I owe its success to my friend Mr. Barber, 
who prepared the herbarium specimen from which the 
photograph is taken, by cleaning the plant of algæ and mud 
and then floating it out upon paper under water, as in the 
method usually employed with delicate algæ. The creeping 
thallus is clearly shown with the numerous secondary shoots 
springing from it. 
On some of the Travancore material shoots were found of 
the kind represented in PI. VIII., figs. 2, 3. Here the secon- 
dary axis had given rise to branches which grew out only 
for a short distance and then seemed to check in their growth, 
forming short spurs with a number of ramuli. 
Towards the end of the wet season the plant developes 
its flowers. As a rule, the tip of the shoot does not become 
floriferous, but most of the lower portion does. What appears 
to occur (further investigation is required through the whole 
process, on living plants) is that in the axils of many ramuli 
or former ramuli, the buds hitherto dormant form floral 
shoots. Almost every axis other than near the tip of the 
plant seems to form a flower. The flower is terminal on the 
axis bearing it, and its pedicel is surrounded by the upper- 
most leaves of the axis, the innermost of which are more or 
less connate into a shallow cup round the base of the pedicel 
(PI. IX., figs. 2, 3). These leaves are a little larger than most 
of the other leaves of the plant. In the axils of two, or 
sometimes three, of the lowest leaves on the short flowering 
shoot ramuli are developed, so that the flower is almost always 
accompanied by a couple of ramuli, as described by Wight. 
Some of these ramuli can still be seen at the bases of the 
shoots (now in fruit) figured in the right-hand half of PI. VI. 
In this way a flower is formed at nearly every node in the 
plant, but the buds on the outer parts of the branches of the 
shoots usually remain in a very rudimentary or abortive 
condition. It will be noticed that at the base of nearly 
every branch, in the place formerly occupied by theramulus 
