NOTES 
CHANGES IN THE SEX OP WILLOWS.— In the genus 
Salix flowers of both sexes are occasionally present in the same 
catkin, and one sometimes finds that the sexual organs are inter- 
mediate in structure between stamens and carpels. By using the 
published records, and by availing myself of the large accumulation of 
material for study in the Herbaria at Kew, Cambridge, in the British 
Museum, and at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, I have gathered together 
a number of facts which may be of interest. 
Firstly, it is obvious that these abnormalities, though widely dis- 
tributed in the species of Salix, are much more common in some 
sections than in others. The section Capreae yields by far the greatest 
number ; and second to it comes the section Fragiles. In dwarf willows 
they seem to be very rare, and in the section Glaciales I have only 
found one abnormal catkin. 
Secondly, we notice that, though the two-staminal willows yield 
most freely these abnormalities, those in which the male flowers 
possess more than two stamens sometimes show them. I can instance 
S. peniandra and S. humboldtiana. 
That the male organs or the female organs are produced from the 
same rudiments is extremely probable ; and in the normal Salix we 
have an unisexual flower, which cannot, as in most Phanerogams, be 
shown to have had an origin from a hermaphrodite flower by abortion 
of one sex. In these abnormal willows, while we readily follow the 
change of the two stamens of one of the Capreae or Purpureae into 
the two carpels, it is not so easy to say what happens when five or 
more stamens have to be replaced by two carpels. 
1 These Notes are abstracts of papers read before Section K of the British 
Association, at the Bristol Meeting, September, 1898. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XII. No. XLVIII. December, 1898.] 
