lxxxviii Journal of Proceedings.
On the Relations to Each Other of Several Forms of
Inflorescence.
To one who attempts to gain a knowledge of botany by the study of
our native plants, as described in the best works on the subject, much
perplexity arises from the obscurity as to meaning of the terms employed
to distinguish the several forms of Inflorescence. Those terms were
invented and their meanings well-defined before botanists had learned to
attach much value to the distinction between the definite and indefinite
systems under which the several modes of inflorescence are classed in
modern works. When we are told that indefinite inflorescence is best
illustrated in the form of a raceme, and learn from some good glossary
that a panicle is a compound raceme, we may go on to learn on authority
equally good that the "London-pride" (Saxifraga umbrosa) has its
flowers in a panicle. We may thence conclude that the inflorescence of
the " London-pride " is indefinite, in which inference we should be in
error. For the panicle of the " London-pride " has a flower at the top
which is the first to expand, and each of its principal branches ends in a
flower with lateral flowers below it. Spikes, racemes, corymbs, and
umbels, as well as panicles, are to be found with terminal flowers, and
cymes, properly so called, do not always observe a centrifugal order in
the expansion of their flowers.
Diagrams illustrating Mr. Gibbs's paper. The numbers where given indicate the
order of expansion:—Fig. 7. Campion (Lychnis); centrifugal, opposite ; branches
simultaneous. Fig. 8. Buttercup. Fig.9. King-cup (Caltha); corymbose. Fig. 10.
Monkshood (Aconitum). Fig. 11. Wallflower ; indefinite, centripetal.
After this it may be doubted whether the systems of inflorescence
described as definite and indefinite are indeed so different as they appear
to be in the writings of botanists. To those who hold the theory that
species were created as distinct as they are now, and that intermediate
forms result from hybridization, it is natural to take forms extremely
different as typical, and to think of intermediate forms as mixed, a plan
which we find followed still in elementary treatises on botany with a con-
siderable number of terms so new and strange that in order to learn them
we have need of all the virtue that an Englishman can boast of not being
frightened at hard words.
It would seem, however, more in accordance with modern philosophy
to look on all the forms of inflorescence as related to a primary or typical
form from which we may consider them to be derived. Now, a flower is
the natural termination of a stem or branch. The simplest form of
inflorescence is that in which the flower is at the top of a stem, as in the
Wood Anemone or Winter Aconite (Eranthis). When more than one
flower grows upon a stem, it follows from the manner in which flowering
plants branch that if one of the flowers be terminal, the next and those