154 
A NOTE ON THE INFLORESCENCE AND 
and Mr C. C. Calder, F.L.S., Curator of the Herbarium, Royal Botanic 
Gardens, Calcutta. The material was collected with a view to the study of 
the later stages of the embryo sac. Unfortunately it includes no very young 
stages of the female inflorescence— of which little is known 1 — and only one 
young male inflorescence (Fig. 2 A). 
Three types of flower occur in Gnetum ; these are (1) the male, (2) the 
complete female (fertile, with 3, sometimes 4 2 envelopes), (3) the incomplete 
female (infertile, with 2 envelopes). The incomplete female apparently 
never occurs except in association with male flowers. The male flowers 
are unaccompanied by female flowers in G. africanum 3 , G. Buchholzianum 
and the upper nodes of the inflorescence of G. scandens. In all species 
studied, the complete female flower occurs, one ring at each node 4 , in an 
inflorescence in which no males are present. In G. Gnemon one or more 
complete female flowers are commonly found, replacing incomplete females, 
in the male inflorescence, particularly in its later stages. 
The male flower consists of an axis bearing one (G. Rumphianum 5 , 
probably G. latifolium 5 and G. verrucosum 5 and rarely G. Gnevion 6 ), two (most 
species), or rarely four 6 ( G . Gnemon), anthers, surrounded completely when 
young, at the base only when mature, by a utricle-like membranous envelope 
(Figs. 3, 6, 11). The envelope commonly contains two vascular bundles 
lying in the antero-posterior plane ; sometimes as many as five bundles are 
present 7 . In G. Rumphianum the envelope has no vascular tissue 7 — as in all 
species of Ephedra, except E. fragilis in which one (rarely two) minute 
bundle enters the posterior half 8 . 
The male flowers arise in crowded basipetal parastichies 9 ; when an upper 
ring of incomplete female flowers is present the uppermost males stand in the 
spaces between their lower boundaries. Filamentous hairs are formed on any 
part of the meristem not occupied by flowers ; they are particularly abundant 
below the ring of female flowers and below the last formed male flowers. 
There is reason to believe that a fresh growth of hairs occurs after the fall of 
the withered male flowers ; frequently they are produced in great profusion 
and are more or less united into bundles for some distance above their point 
of origin. 
The number of parastichies and of flowers in each parastichy varies 
1 Cf. Karsten, 1893. 2 Pearson, 1915. 
3 Exceptionally, female flowers are present. Pearson, 1912. 
4 Two rings in G. latifolium (Karsten, l.c. Taf. x, fig. 53). 
5 Karsten, 1893, p. 341. 6 Pearson, 1915. 
7 Strasburger, 1872, p. 156 ; Karsten, l.c. p. 346. 
8 Thoday and Berridge, 1912, p. 973. The exceptional occurrence of a bundle in the 
perianth of another species is recorded by Strasburger (1872, p. 137). 
9 Karsten, l.c. Taf. x; Coulter and Chamberlain, 1910, figs. 426, 427; Pearson, 1912, 
PI. lx, fig. 2. 
