Note. 
133 
more or less complete were examined. The ovules were generally arranged in two 
rows, one on each margin of the open carpel, and were smaller than ovules from 
a closed carpel of a normal flower. The ovules in a closed carpel occur in a single 
row on the adaxial suture. Fig. 10 indicates a carpel which is nearly normal, 
except that the constriction into the stalk is less abrupt and a slight split appears on 
the adaxial side. 
Bonnier, in ‘Bull. Soc. Bot. France’, vol. xxvi, p. 139 (1879), describes some 
abnormal intermediate states between stamens and carpels in Helleborus foetidus. 
Unfortunately no figures are given, but from the description some at any rate of the 
intermediate conditions appear to agree very closely with some of those described 
here for Eranthis (Figs. 7-10). Bonnier does not, however, mention a condition of 
the ‘ stamen-carpel ’ where a prolonged connective and a well-developed style are both 
present. Since, as stated above, the two genera Eranthis and Helleborus are very 
closely related, it is of interest to find similar abnormalities recorded for species of 
both genera. 
Many instances are noted by Masters ( ‘ Vegetable Teratology,’ pp. 303-10), and 
some figured, of ‘ pistillody of the stamens’. Worsdell, too (‘Principles of Plant 
Teratology,’ vol. ii, pp. 182-93), mentions many cases of ‘ carpellody of the stamens’, 
considering that this phenomenon reveals to us ‘ the fact that stamen and carpel are 
very closely allied organs, and the facility with which the one may change to the 
other, doubtless due to the fact that both are derived from a common ancestor, the 
asexual sporophyll, which exists to-day in some of the more primitive types of plants, 
such as ferns, horse-tails, and some lycopods’. None of the cases mentioned by 
Masters or Worsdell appears to be exactly equivalent to that described above for 
Eranthis. 
My thanks are due to the Director of Kew for permission to publish this note, 
and to Mr. J. Hutchinson, F.L.S., for help with the figures. 
W. B. TURRILL, M.Sc. 
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 
March 21, 1921. 
