lxxxviii 
Journal of Proceedings. 
On the Relations to Each Other of Several Forms of 
Inflorescence. 
To one who attempts to gain a knowledge of botany by the study of 
our native plants, as described in the best works on the subject, much 
perplexity arises from the obscurity as to meaning of the terms employed 
to distinguish the several forms of Inflorescence. Those terms were 
invented and tlieir meanings well-defined before botanists had learned to 
attach much value to the distinction between the definite and indefinite 
systems under which the several modes of inflorescence are classed in 
modern works. When we are told that indefinite inflorescence is best 
illustrated in the form of a raceme, and learn from some good glossary 
that a panicle is a compound raceme, we may go on to learn on authority 
equally good that the “ London-pride ” (Saxifraga umbrosa) has its 
flowers in a panicle. We may thence conclude that the inflorescence of 
the “ London-pride ” is indefinite, in which inference we should be in 
error. For the panicle of the “ London-pride ” has a flower at the top 
which is the first to expand, and each of its principal branches ends in a 
flower with lateral flowers below it. Spikes, racemes, corymbs, and 
umbels, as well as panicles, are to be found with terminal flowers, and 
cymes, properly so called, do not always observe a centrifugal order in 
the expansion of their flowers. 
Diagrams illustrating Mr. Gibbs’s paper. The numbers where given indicate the 
order of expansion:—Fig. 7. Campion ( Lychnis); centrifugal, opposite ; branches 
simultaneous. Fig. 8. Buttercup. Fig. 9. King-cup (Galt ha ); corymbose. Fig. 10. 
Monkshood ( Aconitu.ni ). Fig. 11. Wallflower ; indefinite, centripetal. 
After this it may be doubted whether the systems of inflorescence 
described as definite and indefinite are indeed so different as they appear 
to be in the writings of botanists. To those who hold the theory that 
species were created as distinct as they are now, and that intermediate 
forms result from hybridization, it is natural to take forms extremely 
different as typical, and to think of intermediate forms as mixed, a plan 
which we find followed still in elementary treatises on botany with a con¬ 
siderable number of terms so new and strange that in order to learn them 
we have need of all the virtue that an Englishman can boast of not being 
frightened at hard words. 
It would seem, however, more in accordance with modern philosophy 
to look on all the forms of inflorescence as related to a primary or typical 
form from which we may consider them to be derived. Now, a flower is 
the natural termination of a stem or branch. The simplest form of 
inflorescence is that in which the flower is at the top of a stem, as in the 
Wood Anemone or Winter Aconite ( Eranthis ). When more than one 
flower grows upon a stem, it follows from the manner in which flowering 
plants branch that if one of the flowers be terminal, the next and those 
