Arceuthobium Oxycedri 
BY 
T. JOHNSON, B.Sc. (London), 
University Scholar in Botany, Demonstrator of Botany in Normal School of 
Science, Kensington. 
With Plate X. A. 
S O much has already been written on this genus of the 
Loranthaceae that many readers of the Annals will no 
doubt be surprised that there should be anything new to be 
said on the subject. Indeed I intended at the outset of this 
investigation to confine my remarks to the mechanism of 
dehiscence of the fruit, but an examination of the plant led me 
further, especially as the published accounts of the plant differ 
from my own observations in some important particulars. I 
suppose the reader to be acquainted with the characters 
of the plant, of which a technical description, extracted from 
the Genera Plantarum of Bentham and Hooker, will be found 
on the next page. This paper begins with a description of 
the contents of the ovary as seen by myself, followed by its 
comparison with the observations of different investigators of 
the characters oi Arceuthobium and other Achlamydospermeae; 
after which the endeavour is made to assign to the structures 
in the ovary their morphological values. Descriptions of the 
structure of the fruit and, as a result, of its peculiar mode of 
dehiscence follow naturally. The arrangement of the parts of 
the expanded male flower as seen under the compound 
microscope, succeeded by the development of the male flower 
and of an individual stamen, is next taken, the last parts of 
the plant considered being the vegetative organs, already fully 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. II. No. VI. August 1888.] 
L 
