THE 
HEW PflYTOhOGIST. 
Vol. V., No. 3 . 
March, 1906 . 
ON THE MORPHOLOGY OF CHLORANTHUS. 
By Helen M. Armour, M.A., 
Botanical Department, University of Glasgow. 
[With Plates III. and IV.] 
F late years some interest has been shown in the detailed 
morphology of the flower in the Piperales. Several genera 
of the Piperacete have been described, Saururus has been examined, 
but no corresponding study of representatives of either the 
Chloranthacese or Lacistemaceae appears to have been made. In 
this paper are embodied the results of the investigation of the 
flowers of three species of Chloranthus. The material of 
Chloranthus chinensis was obtained from the Hakgala Botanic 
Gardens in Ceylon, and that of C. officinalis from Hakgala and 
from forests at Singapore. For some specimens of C. brachystachys 
from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, I am indebted to 
Professor Balfour. The preservation of the material collected in the 
tropics sufficed for the study of the morphology of the flower and 
the general structure of the ovule. Although the examination of 
better fixed material no doubt would show further points of interest, 
it seems justifiable in the present state of our knowledge of the 
Chloranthaceae to record the results obtained. 
In all these species of Chloranthus, the inflorescence is a spike 
with small, sessile flowers borne in the axil of a single tiny bract 
(PI. III., Fig. 1). Each flower in C. chinensis and C. officinalis is com¬ 
posed of a staminal scale of three lobes inserted on an ovary which 
is one-celled and has a single pendulous orthotropous ovule (Fig. 2). 
The middle lobe of the staminal scale overtops the two lateral ones. 
The pollen sacs, which are eight in number and grouped in pairs 
(each pair resembling an anther lobe), are distributed so that four 
of them belong to the middle lobe and two to each of the two 
lateral lobes (Fig. 5). In C. officinalis the ovary is more bulky. 
The other species which -was examined, C. brachystachys, shows a 
