Female 1 Flower' in Coniferae . 71 
exponent, that all axial appendages primarily originated by 
sterilization and subdivision of the sporogonium of the lower 
Cryptogams, and possessed, therefore, originally a radial in 
contradistinction to a bilateral, structure, Celakovsky be¬ 
lieves this radial structure of the sporophyll to have been 
characteristic of the ancestors of the. Gym nosperms or, as he 
calls them, the Archigymnosperms. He maintains that this 
radial structure has persisted to the present day, in the male 
sporophylls of the Gnetaceae, where the sporangia are ter¬ 
minal ; in the female sporophylls of the Cycads, where they 
are marginal (this being also occasionally the case on the male 
side, as in Zamia) ; in the sporophylls of Ginkgo, as well seen 
in the abnormal female flower described by Fujii 1 ; in Os- 
munda , Hymenophyllum , and the Psilotaceae; and in the 
stamens of all Angiosperms. From the terminal, the spor¬ 
angia came to assume a marginal position on the sporophyll 
until, when the latter in many plants became bilateral in 
structure, the sporangia were frequently relegated either to 
the dorsal or the ventral side, as in most Ferns, and the 
carpels of some Angiosperms. 
In an early paper in ‘ Flora ’ he has shown that the in¬ 
teguments of an ovule have their origin in the segments of 
the sporophyll, the inner integument springing from two 
distinct segments, this latter fact thus easily accounting for 
the appearance of the integument of the Abietineae in its early 
stage as two distinct rudiments, misleading Baillon to assert 
so positively that this fact proved the ovular envelope in 
this group to be of the nature of an ovary and not of an 
integument. 
Celakovsky urges that, throughout; the entire order of Coni- 
ferae, no true carpel or female sporophyll is present, but that 
organ is reduced to a single ovule just as is also the case in 
the female organs of the Gnetaceae. 
In the Taxaceae there are always two integuments of the 
normal form, enclosing the ovule. In the case of Taxus , and 
1 ‘ On the Different Views hitherto proposed regarding the Morphology of the 
Flowers of Ginkgo bilobaj 1897. 
