6o2 Prain .—^4 Review of the Genera 
E, sabspicata , resembles Poggeophyton aculeaium so closely that, apart from 
its c disc it is mainly separable because its leaves are denticulate in place 
of crenate. This fact induces, therefore, some doubt as to whether the 
presence of receptacular glands of a male type in the female flowers of 
P. aculeatum be more than an abnormality. That doubt is increased by 
the circumstance that one of Pogge’s specimens exhibits an unusual irregu¬ 
larity ; towards the base of some of its subspicate racemes, male flowers 
occupy the positions which higher up the spikes are occupied by ripe fruits. 1 
These male flowers, except that they have 9 stamens instead of 12, 
and 5 pairs of extrastaminal glands in place of 6 , are remarkably like 
the male flowers of E. subspicata. It may be argued that this monoecious 
condition affords an additional reason for treating Poggeophyton aculeatum 
as the type of a distinct genus. The argument would, however, be open to 
serious objection ; the male flowers in question, in place of being glomeru- 
late, are solitary as if they were female ones. The inference, therefore, 
rather is that the female flowers exhibit, in the androecial aspect which has 
been imparted to their ‘disc’, a complementary effect of the male influence 
in the plant. All that its characters justify us in concluding is that the 
particular plant from which Pogge’s specimens were taken did not show 
that clearly defined diclinism which is characteristic of the genus to which 
it belongs. 2 The character of the disc in Poggeophyton aculeatum , in place 
of affording a criterion of generic import, supplies one that is doubtfully 
adequate for specific discrimination. What, in any case, seems clear, is that the 
claim of Poggeophytum aculeatum to a place, along with E. subspicata , in the 
genus Erythrococca , widened as Pax has widened it, is valid. 
The fact that in E. Poggeophyton , E. Menyharthii, and E. tristis y the 
bodies which occupy the position of the flattened hypogynous scales met 
with in other nearly allied species are manifestly staminodes, while the 
scales which may accompany these staminodes in E. Poggeophyton and 
E. Menyharthii are comparable with male receptacular glands, themselves 
certainly staminodial, appears to warrant the belief that the hypogynous 
scales in the genus as a whole correspond morphologically with a modified 
androecium. Whether this interpretation be justified or not, the existence 
of the conditions that obtain in Claoxylon Menyharthii and in Poggeophyton 
1 The only instance in which a doubt has hitherto arisen as to whether a species of Erythrococca 
may be monoecious, has been in the case of Claoxylon (.Athroandra ) Schweinfurthii, Pax (Engl. Bot. 
Jahrb., xix. 86), a plant which in this paper is treated as a form of C. flaccidum, Pax. The circum¬ 
stances have been fully explained by Pax ( 1 . c.). In the case of C. Schweinfurthii , the two sexes 
are met with in specimens issued by Schweinfurth under the same field number; the presumption 
therefore is that they may have been found on one plant. But in this instance the male and female 
flowers are on distinct twigs, and we do not have the definite proof which Poggeophyton aculeatum 
affords as to the existence of a monoecious condition. 
2 Analogous instances of collateral manifestation of the male influence in a female flower and 
vice versa are not infrequent in Cannabis sativa ; an account of some of these may be found in 
Sc. Mem. by Officers, Med. and Sanit. Dept. India, N.S.,no. 12, 1904. 
