2 Campbell . — The Development of the Flower and 
this probably is more in accordance with the peculiar char- 
acters of the plant. 
Our knowledge of the morphology of the plant is mainly 
derived from the elaborate monograph of Hieronymus x , which 
proposed to give a very full account of the morphology, but 
was unfortunately left incomplete. Schumann 1 2 has given 
some details as to the relation of the flower to the axis of 
the plant, but these simply confirm the earlier observations 
of Hieronymus. Beyond the work of these observers, so far 
as the writer knows, the plant has been described only in 
a superficial way. 
The writer has been engaged for some time upon a study 
of the flower and embryo in a number of the simpler 
Monocotyledons, and among the forms which have engaged 
his attention is Lilaea , which is common in the region about 
San Francisco Bay. The results of these studies are given in 
the following pages. 
The material upon which these were made was for the 
most part collected in the neighbourhood of Stanford Uni- 
versity, where the plant is a common one. In this neighbour- 
hood the plant grows either in shallow water, or completely 
exposed upon the mud. More rarely the plant is completely 
submerged except the flowers. It is an annual, germinating 
with the advent of the winter-rains, and flowering within 
a few weeks of germination. Flowers continue to form as 
long as the plant grows, but the plant is finally killed by the 
drying up of the mud in which it is rooted. The ripened 
fruits remain in the dried mud during the summer and 
autumn, and germinate as soon as the rains have soaked the 
ground. 
Most of the plants collected by the writer grew in the 
tenacious black clay (‘ adobe ’) characteristic of much of 
the land in the immediate vicinity of the University. The 
favourite localities for the plant were depressions in the fields 
1 Monografia de Lilaea: Actas de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias en 
Cordoba. Buenos Aires, 1892. 
2 Loc. cit. 
