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A NOTE ON THE INFLORESCENCE AND 
serve as a basis for any alternative view. Owing to the difficulty of obtain- 
ing the necessary material, no single species has yet been adequately studied, 
and of the majority of the species we know nothing more than the few 
macroscopic features on which their specific rank is established. The 
morphology of the structures concerned cannot be regarded as satisfactorily 
established until a wider and more intense study of the genus than has yet 
been made, has furnished a new body of fact. 
Summary. 
1. Considerable differences occur within the same species in the numbers 
of male flowers produced in basipetal succession at each node of the 
inflorescence. In G. scandens the number of male flowers in a single 
inflorescence may be as many as 3000. 
2. The elongation of the antherophore which immediately pi’ecedes the 
dehiscence of the anthers is presumably very rapid. As in Welwitschia, 
intermediate stages between those in which the anthers are still concealed in 
the envelope, and the antherophore fully extended, are not seen. In the 
last stage of growth of the antherophore its cells become much elongated and 
lose their starch. 
3. The male inflorescence of G. Gnemon usually bears one or more 
complete female flowers. These are in some material more abundant in old 
inflorescences from which some or all the male flowers have fallen. 
4. In G. scandens the incomplete female flowers are very small and, so 
far as known, are always concealed from view by the male flowers. The 
upper nodes in this species usually produce no female flowers. 
5. It is suggested that G. scandens shews a stage in the reduction of the 
female flowers of the male inflorescence which, when carried further, results in 
the pure male inflorescence of G. africanum and G. Buchholzianum. 
6. Since the incomplete female flowers must be regarded as derived by 
partial arrest from complete and potentially functional flowers, the former 
existence of a normally bisexual inflorescence must be assumed. 
7. From such a bisexual inflorescence, the pure female inflorescence was 
probably derived by the arrest of the nodal meristem by which the later 
formed male flowers are produced. 
8. It is suggested that the long continued activity of the meristem 
which forms the male flowers is a derived character — probably to be 
correlated with the separation of the sexes in unisexual inflorescences. It 
is therefore probable that in more primitive forms a smaller number of male 
flowers was formed at each node — perhaps only a single ring. 
