i86 
Notes . 
cerning the facts embodied in this note. It is certainly extremely 
interesting and equally surprising to find a tree, attaining the height 
of 60 feet, exhibiting a structure such as is described above. A 
certain amount of light may be thrown on the subject by the fact 
that some species of the genus are lianes, and, what is more interesting, 
that one at least, D. variabilis , is a climber when growing in the 
forest, but a shrub when situated in the open. 
Schenck 1 makes a few remarks concerning the anomaly of this 
plant. He states that within the genus Dalbergia, anomalous secondary 
thickening is only known to him in one species, namely D. paniculata. 
He then goes on to say that ‘ according to a statement of Brandis 
(Forest Flora), verified for me by the author, the stem of this species 
consists of broad concentric masses of wood, which alternate with 
narrow zones of phloem. This occurrence is the more remarkable, 
because D. paniculata is in no way a liane, but is a tree 60 ft. high. 
The question as to the origin of the anomalous structure is an open 
one. The possibility is not excluded, that this species may have 
been derived from a liane and may have inherited from the latter 
and retained as a character the special form of secondary thickening. 
Perhaps one will obtain data for the discussion of this question when 
the stem-structure and the precise affinities of all the species of 
Dalbergia are known. Gamble mentions besides the anomalous 
D. paniculata , Roxb. a number of East Indian species of Dalbergia , 
mostly trees (D. Sissoo, latifolia , cultrata , lanceolaria , nigrescens), and 
two lianes ( D . stipulacea,foliacea ), all of which exhibit normal wood.’ 
Jodrell Laboratory, 
Royal Gardens, Kew. 
THOMAS G. HILL. 
THE OVARY OF PAR 35 TASSXA PALTJSTRXS, LINN. — The 
following sentence in Payer’s Traite d’Organog^nie compare de la 
Fleur (Paris, 1857), p. 183, first attracted my closer attention to 
Parnassia palustris : — 
1 Contrairement a ce qui se passe dans la plupart des autres plantes, 
cette fleur du Parnassia palustris commence par §tre irr^gulibre dans 
son ddveloppement et finit par £tre completement rdgulihre a son &at 
parfait.’ After satisfying myself that this was so, I examined a large 
1 Schenck, Anatomie der Lianen : Botanische Mittheilungen aus den Tropen, 
Heft 5, Theil 2, pp. 169-170. 
