112 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
setting of a eerlain amount of seed, though cross-fertilization would of course 
be iiihibited. These questions await further study, which of course necessitates 
waiting for material in the proper stage of development. It is hoped that this 
may ere long be obtained. 
Should the peculiarity turn out to be constant for the species, or even for one 
individual of the species (in which case it should probably be interpreted as 
reversionary in its nature), it may perhaps have some slight bearing on the 
question of the relation of the floral parts. The writer has long been inclined 
to question the accepted terminology which deflnes the pistil as a sporophyll, 
and to regard the ovule rather as the sporophyll, and the carpellary wall as a 
part of the leaf system of the flower, so modified as to become a protective 
envelope for the ovule. Under this view the stamen and ovule would be regarded 
as complementary sporophylls, and the pistil would be regarded as a complex 
organ, part of which belongs to the system of floral leaves, and part to the 
system of sporophylls. There are many analogies that would seem to indicate 
the correctness of this view. The occasional occurrence of ovules on the inner 
carpellary wall, (“pariental placenta”), does not prove the carpel to be a 
sporophyll any more than does the occurrence of stamens on petals prove the 
petal to be a sporophyll. The normal position for a stamen is in the axil of 
a floral leaf, and, if the theory here advanced be correct, the normal position 
of the ovule is similar. That both are sometimes mounted on the leaf itself does 
not in any way effect the morphological signiflcance. The substitution of stamens 
for ovules in Stenospermation, might perhaps be taken as an indication of the 
essential homology between the two. The stamen, in this case, has simply, by 
some strange perversion, developed in the axil of the inner, instead of the outer 
leaf. 
