THE 
HEW PHYTOIiOGIST. 
Vol. XI, No. 7. 
July, 1912 . 
[Published July 30th, 1912]. 
FLORAL EVOLUTION : WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE 
TO THE SYMPETALOUS DICOTYLEDONS. 
By H. F. Wernham. 
VII. Infers : Part I. Rubiales. 
H E significance accorded to the relative position of the gynaecium 
1 in the flower as a critical classificatory character was much 
greater formerly than it is at the present time. In Lindley’s system, 
for example, the character of sympetaly is entirely subordinated to 
that of epigyny, and this author criticizes forcibly the primary 
divisions of the Dicotyledons made by Jussieu, based on the nature 
of the perianth and the cohesion of its parts. 
We have discussed already in our earlier chapters the significance 
of epigyny, and the attempt has been made to portray the biological 
advantage accruing from this character. We shall learn in the 
sequel that those forms which are universally regarded as standing 
in the van of floral evolution invariably possess an inferior ovary; 
and the Inferas, * 1 2 which form the subject of this and the following 
chapters, include some 20,000 species, or, roughly speaking, more 
than one half of the total number of species in Sympetalae. We shall 
see, moreover, that these species are divisible into a few very natural 
groups, which display in tjieir turn unmistakeable signs of mutual 
affinity, exclusive of the epigynous character; while their connection 
with the other sections of Sympetalae—Heteromerae and Bicarpellatae 
of Bentham and Hooker—must needs be traced only through a very 
remote archichlamydeous ancestry. The problem of the origin of 
the Inferae, in fact, will afford us yet another illustration of the 
1 SeeLindley: The Vegetable Kingdom. Third Edition, pp. 243-246. 
2 The collective name given by Bentham and Hooker to Rubiales, 
Asterales, and Campanales (see table, p. 219) all characterized 
by epigyny. 
