1 
Observations on the Physiology of Seed 
Development in Staphylea. 
By 
J. Arthur Harris. 
Carnegie Institution of Washington. Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, U. S. A. 
With 1 figure in the text. 
I Introductory remarks. 
Tn most species of plants an ovnle which does not receive a 
sperm ceases its development. Beyond this, we can hardly venture 
in a discussion of the causes which determine whether an ovule 
shall develop into a seed. Goebel in his “Organographie der 
Pflanzen'’ has frankly pointed out our almost complete ignorance 
of these matters, and I believe that most broadly informed botanists 
would agree with his Statements. Yet the problem of the factors 
which determine the fate of an ovule seems to be of considerable 
interest, and definite knowledge perhaps of practical importance 
as well. 
The logical method of approaching the problem seems to be 
to make a beginning somewhere, it does not matter much where, 
and to* get quantitative approximations of the influence of individual 
factors until finally researches of a monographic character can be 
undertaken. 
In a study of the factors infiuencing the length of the pod 
in Staphylea. 1 ) I have had occasion to determine the correlation 
between the number of seeds per locule and the position of the 
fruit on the inflorescence and between the number of seeds per 
locule and the number of fruits per inflorescence for a single series 
of 2059 pods of Staphylea trifolia from the Missouri Botanical 
0 Harris, J. Arthur, The Influence of the Seed upon the Size of the 
Fruit in Staphylea. (Bot. Gaz. In Press.) 
Beihefte Bot. Centralbl. Bd. XXVIII. Abt. I. Heft 1. 
1 
