Female ‘Flower ' m Coniferae . 45 
of Gymnospenny. In support of this idea, he compares the 
female organs of Coniferae with those of Cycads (which latter 
are for him evidently ovules), and with the ovules of other 
Phanerogamous plants. The proof lies chiefly in the resem¬ 
blance between the body lying within the envelope and the 
nucellus of a typically-constructed ovule. The seminiferous 
scale is an open carpel bearing ovules at its base. 
Schleiden (34, 36) is noted as the exponent of the view, 
first of all put forward in 1839, and later in his ‘ Grundziige 
der wissenschaftlichen Botanik’ in 1843, that a placenta is 
always an axial struc¬ 
ture. He cites the Cu- 
pressineae and Taxineae 
as examples of orders 
with basilar ovules in 
which the placenta is the 
extremity of the axis, 
and the Abietineae as 
amongst those in which 
the placenta is an organ 
distinct from the carpel- 
lary leaves, arising later 
than the latter. ‘ In 
Abietineae the scale, 
considered by R. Brown 
as an open ovary, is only 
the axillary bud of the 
carpellary leaf, situated 
beneath the scale, and for this latter reason only, it could not 
be a foliar organ, because folium in axilla folii is a thing 
without example in the whole vegetable kingdom.’ 
Von Mohl (38) in 1845, in a paper dealing chiefly with the 
male organs of Coniferae, makes the interesting statement 
that in Pmus , &c., the bract of the female cone is greatly 
reduced and a leaf of a secondary axis replaces it. The same 
thing occurs in the vegetative shoot, where the foliage-leaf 
belongs to a secondary shoot and the subtending leaf is 
^—clog 1 \ 
Fig. 3. Diagram of an abnormal ‘ flower ’ of 
Abietineae; the seminiferous scale ( ss ) is 
split into the two first leaves of an axillary- 
shoot ; b — bract; l 2 = second pair of leaves; 
/ 3 — third pair; ax 2 = axis of axillary bud ; 
ax x — prim ary axis of cone. 
