458 Saunders. — A Reversionary Character 
circumference of the section is completed by two normal-sized valves form¬ 
ing a blunt angle but no external suture along the line of fusion, which is 
without vascular elements. Thus throughout a considerable part of its 
length the siliqua is constructed of four valves with three intervening com¬ 
missures (Fig. 19). * The stigma configuration, as one would expect in these 
circumstances, is asymmetrical. The one commissure forms a typical large 
knob ; of the other two on either side of the interpolated valve, the one 
forms a small knob, the other a barely perceptible swelling. A more 
symmetrical type of construction was observed by de Candolle 1 in a fruit of 
the Wallflower, of which he gives figures as seen whole and in cross-section. 
The drawings show four valve carpels, one of which is free from the others, 
and (apparently) only two small arcs. (The fact that the vascular strands 
are not represented leaves it uncertain whether the two missing arcs were 
suppressed wholly or in part, or whether they were exceptional in containing 
two vascular strands which separated as the tissue split and the one valve 
became free, so that each remained attached to the margin of a neighbour¬ 
ing valve.) 
3. The siliqua is three-sided, with one unpaired valve in the lateral 
plane and two equal valves converging to an opposite point, most frequently 
curved into a half-circle, but sometimes straight or nearly so, with two 
normal sutures and in place of the third a sharp-angled edge becoming 
ragged later and often torn across.- Of the three valves, the lateral one is 
at a lower level and strongly convex on the outer surface; the other two 
stand at a slightly higher level and are flat or even concave. A normally 
formed partition usually connects the two small arcs on either side of the 
one lateral carpel, so as to form a fertile loculus. The other two valves 
often bulge so much on their inner face as to meet at the midribs and thus 
form a second false loculus, but on their contiguous margins they produce 
no placentae. These latter edges may remain confluent, forming a knife- 
edge ; or they may prematurely separate for a longer or shorter distance, 
diverging so as to expose their inner face either completely, or up to the 
line of their coalescent midribs, their margins showing a clean split; or they 
may become free but remain in close juxtaposition, presenting a ragged 
appearance which is often further emphasized by transverse Assuring, 
followed by drying up of the exposed tissue. The stigmatic arrangement is 
in accord with this configuration. The two median commissures usually end 
in fair-sized knobs. On one side of these knobs is the loop of stigmatic 
papillae crowning the lateral valve, on the other the two parallel crests of 
1 Monstruosites vegetales (in Nouveaux Memoires de la Soc. Helvetique des Sci. Nat., v, 1841, 
Tab. V, Figs. S, 13). 
2 A precisely similar appearance in the frnit of the Wallflower is depicted by Schlotterbeck 
(Acta Helvetica, ii, Tab. II, Fig. 16), and there is little doubt that the sickle-shaped siliqua on the 
Stock plant which served Besler for his drawing in Hortus Eystettensis (Cl. Aestivalis , fol. 33, ii) 
was derived from a 3-valved gynoecium. 
