160 
A NOTE ON THE INFLORESCENCE AND 
unimportant “ abnormality ” 1 has been confirmed by Church 2 who remarks that 
an archesporium “ in the apical growing point of the cone was found in all 
specimens examined and may be taken as the rule.” In the case figured 2 , 
the apex of the axis containing a macrospore bears a striking resemblance to 
a female flower in an early stage of development 3 . 
It appears then that the cone-axes of Welwitschia and Gnetum, if not 
also of Ephedra, may produce sporogenous tissue and perhaps are to be 
regarded as potential nucelli reduced to the condition of vegetative axes. 
But if so their manner of growth is quite different. In Welwitschia there 
is a gradual apical growth with the regular production of crowded lateral 
outgrowths in acropetal succession ; in Gnetum the number of nodes is very 
much smaller, crowded or distant, and, so far as can be judged from the 
material available, the stages of development at successive nodes are very 
much closer than in Welwitschia and not acropetal. When once the nodes 
and internodes are laid down in the primordium, the further growth seems 
to be entirely intercalary. The meaning of this peculiarity will not be 
satisfactorily explained until there has been an opportunity of examining 
very much younger inflorescences than have yet been available. 
While the number of nodes appears to be more or less a specific 
character 4 , there are occasionally considerable variations from the normal. In 
G. Buchholzianum, for example, an inflorescence with only two nodes has 
been described 5 . Owing to the early organisation of the nodes of the 
inflorescence, and the presence of the normal number of normal flowers at 
each node, it is improbable that the production of only two nodes is due to 
starvation or to other unfavourable conditions. It has been suggested that 
the primitive type from which both the existing male and female in- 
florescences are derived had only one node at which were produced probably 
only a single ring of male flowers and a terminal group (including a terminal 
1 Sykes, 1910, p. 207 ; Lignier and Tison, 1912, p. 165. 
2 Church, 1914, p. 124, PL 10, fig. 5. 
3 Attention may be drawn to a misapprehension of the argument based by the writer on 
the discovery of sporogenous cells in the cone-axis. Miss Sykes (Mrs Thoday) states (1910, 
p. 206) that “the remarkable discovery of megaspores in the axis of the female cone has 
however led Pearson to consider the possibility of regarding it as morphologically different from 
the male cone.” A reference to the original description and discussion (Pearson, 1909, p. 334) 
shews that this remarkable structure was used only in support of the generally accepted view 
that the ovule of Welwitschia is cauline and that the axis of the female cone is broadly speakiug 
homologous with a nucellus — a nucellus which has acquired the characters of a vegetative axis. 
Further, it is definitely stated (Pearson, l.c. p. 335) that the absence of these sporogenous cells 
“from the axis of the male cone, if confirmed, is not remarkable..., for the ovule of the male 
flower apparently never produces sporogenous cells.” The suggestion that the male and female 
cones are not strictly homologous had no reference to the structure of the cone-axes (Pearson, 
l.c. pp. 337, 338). 
4 Pearson, 1912, p. 614. 
5 Pearson, l.c. 
