168
THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
members had no inducement to carefully study the question, or to take a lasting
interest in the Forest.
Mr. Lindley recapitulated the charges of mismanagement so fully detailed in
his letters to the ''Evening Post" and other papers, more particularly criticising
the operations on York Hill and Staples Hill.
The President said that the question of the best way to deal with parts of the
forest was a most difficult one to solve, but he thought that what they had seen
and heard would be most useful should occasion arise for action to be taken on
the part of the Club or the public. He did not think that it would be desirable
to move officially in the matter at present.
Mr. Charles Browne, M.A., F.S.A. (Hon. Counsel to the Club), then delivered
Part I. of a lecture "On some Abnormal Forms of Vegetation," largely illustrated
by specimens from his own herbarium. After alluding to the importance of the
study of irregular and abnormal forms of plants, and the interest that it would
afford to those who had exhausted the flora of their own neighbourhoods, the
lecturer proceeded to give examples of abnormal growth :—
(a) In Roots—Interlacing; Interchange of functions between roots and
branches; Roots abnormally produced from various parts of the stem, branches,
leaves, &c. ; Chinese monstrous forms of trees. (B) IN trunks and branches
OF trees—Inosculation ; Hybridisation by means of grafting ; Parasites ; Burrs,
and other excrescences, (c) In stems of herbaceous plants—Fasciation ;
Reversion from fasciation to original type; Abnormal lengthening and shortening of
stems, (d) In Leaves—Pari- and Impari-pinnate leaves; Four-leaved Sham-
rock ; Opposite and alternate arrangement of leaflets interchanged; other variations
in leaves and leaflets, (e) Fronds of ferns, (f) Bracts—Petaloid bracts.
(g) Flowers — Double flowers; Phylloid petals; Anthers and pistils inter-
changed ; Parti-coloured hyacinths ; Proliferous flowers ; "Hose-in-hose" ;
Peloria ; other vagaries in flowers ; (H) Fruits—Double fruits ; Apples; Peaches
and Nectarines.
Owing to want of time, but a portion only of the items in the above syllabus
could be discussed, but Mr. Browne kindly promised to give the omitted subjects
due attention in a subsequent lecture.
Mr. John Gibbs, of Chelmsford, communicated the following note :—
" In the year 1878, I had a plant of the Canterbury-bell (Campanula medium)
flowering in the third year of its growth, the seed from which it sprung having been
sown in 1876. Its principal stem was crowned with synanthic flowers, like Fig.
14, on page 37 of Masters' 'Vegetable Teratology.' The compound capsule
thence resulting contained innumerable seeds, from which I raised over 200 plants.
Six of these plants flowered in the second year, 1880, with no fasciated stem nor
any nearer approach to synanthy than in having six lobes to the corolla in a few
cases. From one of these plants I gathered seeds, and raised many plants
without fasciation or synanthy, beyond the production of some flowers with an
increased number of lobes in the corolla, six or seven. Among the two hundred
plants which did not flower till the third year were several which had synanthic
flowers, but none of them so large as the original from the seed of which they
grew. In some cases a stem or branch would split into two, each bearing a flower
with perhaps fifteen lobes in the corolla of one and twelve on the other, the number
of corolla lobes on the two prongs of the fork being in every case unequal. Thus
it appears that fasciated stems may be produced in plants grown from the seed of
synanthic flowers. A plant with double flowers, open at the same time as the
original synanthic flowers, also produced seed which grew into plants with flowers
at the same time, synanthic and double. Perhaps a florist would call them semi-
double. A botanist would find polyphylly and pleiotaxy."