Edith R. Saunders 
156 
2. The fact that foliar organs functioning as bracts sometimes 
occur in species which typically are bractless in this sense, and that 
even in one and the same species they may assume very varied forms, 
suggests that in such cases the bracts were in the first instance 
reduced to their basal extensions. 
3. But that after this stage in the phylogenetic history has been 
reached, a favourable conjunction of circumstances may still allow 
of the reappearance of the exserted portion, hereditary control being 
then inoperative or subordinated to the influence of varying con¬ 
ditions. Thus in Matthiola incana the occasionally-appearing free 
portion may take on the form of a foliage leaf, a sepal, a structure 
half leaf, half sepal, or a small non-vascular process constituting'a 
simple hydathode. 
4. This sequence of reduction followed by occasional reversion 
is parallelled in most striking fashion by the phylogenetic history of 
the Cruciferous gynoecium, which is dealt with elsewhere (see foot¬ 
note 1, p. 155). 
For the drawings reproduced on p. 152 I am indebted to Miss 
D. F. M. Pertz to whom I here tender my most grateful thanks. 
The expenses incurred in connection with the work have been 
defrayed in part by a grant from the Royal Society. 
AN APOCARPIC PLANT OF THE RED CAMPION 
(.LYCHNIS DIOICA L.) 
By R. SNOW 
(With 4 figures in the text) 
T he plant described in this note was found flowering in a hedge- 
bank near Exeter in September, 1922. 
The petals were vestigial or lacking, and the plant being carpel- 
lary, only minute rudiments of stamens were present. The carpels, 
however, were, in most of the flowers, entirely free, and 5 to 8 or 
more in number. They bore freely exposed ovules on their adaxial 
surface and terminated in stigmas of normal appearance (fig. 1). In 
a few flowers, a central syncarpous ovary of 2 or 3 carpels was sur¬ 
rounded by a ring of free carpels. The calyx was normal. 
