The Mucilage- and other Glands of the 
Plumbagineae. 
BY 
JOHN WILSON, D.Sc. 
Lecturer on Botany in the University of St. Andrews. 
With Plates X, XI, XII and XIII. 
URING the summer of 1888 my attention was arrested 
by observing in one of the greenhouses of the Royal 
Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, that Statice rosea had a very 
copious secretion of mucilage in the axils of its leaves. This 
species (Fig. 1) is shrubby, with the leaves distichous at the 
extremities of the branches, the lower portions of which evi- 
dently soon become bare. The bases of the petioles are very 
markedly amplexicaul, the older overlapping the younger to 
a considerable degree. The fresh discharge of mucilage is of 
itself usually conspicuous enough to rivet attention, standing 
as it does high in the axillary spaces of the older leaves (Fig, 
1, m 1 ), or completely enveloping the younger ones (Fig. 1, m). 
In summer the heat of the sun dries the mucilage, which is 
then found hanging in white shreds from various points of the 
leaves and stems. A general coating of hardened secretion 
may also then be present on the under side of many leaves, 
and a portion of this mounted dry, being quite transparent, 
exhibits a faultless reproduction of epidermal cells, stomata 
and glands (Fig. 2). 
It was quite natural to presume the existence of special 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. IV. No. XIV, May 1890.] 
