Tubers in Nymphaea Lotus , var. monstrosa. 109 
deep has it plunged over the edge of the flower-pot. The 
sepals and other leaves now commence to decay ; and the 
stalk becomes rotten and gives way, allowing the tuber to fall 
to the bottom 1 . 
The specimen last figured was the oldest in Mr. Gardiner’s 
bottle. On examining the plant at Kew, I dug about in the 
soil surrounding the rootstock, and found, at various depths, 
black rounded bodies which, upon cleaning, turned out to be 
tubers, each with traces of a stalk at one point (Figs. 10, 11, 
12). These were evidently the product of the deformed 
flower-buds under discussion which had dropped into the mud 
from the decay of the peduncles, all the leaves, buds, and 
roots, of which traces still remained, having gradually de- 
composed, and now forming, with the enveloping hairs, a bed 
of manure for the new plant. Upon cleaning away the hairs 
from one of the specimens, the apical region was seen to be 
protected from injury by the fence-like arrangement of the 
inturned petioles of dead leaves (Fig. 11). This arrangement 
of petioles was readily observable in some of the older buds 
still borne on the peduncles : the leaves, whose petioles were 
thus turned inwards, were an inner circle surrounded by the 
buds in the axils of the outer leaves. 
A longitudinal section through the tuber showed a cup- 
shaped depression, which contained a bunch of young leaves, 
closely enveloped in hairs, constituting the apical bud 
(Fig. 12). Such an arrangement has apparently been brought 
about by the intercalary growth of a portion of the tuber 
below the origin of the younger leaves, similar to that 
1 The transitory nature of the leaves and roots developed upon the swelling tuber 
reminds one of the few small leaves formed on the bulbils on the inflorescence of 
Polygonum viviparum (Drude in Schenk’s Handbuch, i. 597), before they are 
dropped from the parent plant. The shedding of leaves is probably connected 
with the fact that the species has a period of rest ; and the condition of the parent 
plant, as it approaches its resting state, is probably shared in by the parts cut off 
to lead an independent existence. In such plants as Crassula quadrifida , which, 
at any rate in our greenhouses, appears to be evergreen, the plantlets, dropped 
from the inflorescence, take root and grow continuously till they assume the size 
and form of the parent plant. 
