Fig. 67.—Proliferous Rose. Calyx leafy; petals normal, some reflexed; stamens and pistil absent; in their places a branch with leaves and flowers.
Fig. 68.—Rose exhibiting median, axillary, lateral, floral, and leafy prolification in same flower.
Complicated prolification.—From what has been before stated it may be seen that prolification of two or more kinds may coexist in the same flower. Mixed leafy and floral prolification is not unfrequent in proliferous roses, where a shoot is, as it were, prolonged through the centre of the original flower and terminated by a second flower, or even by a cluster, as is well shown in the accompanying figure (fig. 67). Median and axillary prolification, also, not unfrequently coexist in the same flower; thus, in a proliferous rose forwarded to me by Mr. W. Thomson (fig. 68), the following changes were observed:—the swollen portion below the calyx, the "hip," was entirely absent; the sepals were leaf-like in aspect, the petals unaffected; above the petals the axis was prolonged for a short distance and then bore a circlet of miniature, sessile roses, destitute, indeed, of calyx, but provided with numerous petals, stamens, and pistils. Above these lateral flowers, the prolonged axis bore a number of scales in many rows. The scales were in their turn surmounted by a whorl of five perfect leaves, beyond which, again, the axis was prolonged into a leafy shoot terminated by a flower bud, the whole constituting a remarkably complicated admixture of elements belonging to the flower, the bud, the inflorescence, and the leafshoot.[143]
Proliferous flowers of Orchids also occasionally present great complexity in the arrangement of their parts. An instance of this kind was described by myself from specimens furnished by Dr. Moore, of Glasnevin, in the 'Journal of the Linnean Society,' vol. ix, p. 349, tabs. x, xi, and from which the following summary is extracted:
Fig. 69.—Proliferous Orchis. Diagram showing the arrangement of the several organs in the seven outer circles of the flower. Each whorl is numbered, and the position of the axillary buds shown by the small circles.
The primary flowers were composed of five distinct whorls, and of at least two others less perfectly developed. These primary flowers did not give rise to median formations, but they produced secondary buds in the axils of the segments of the perianth. These latter buds were themselves the subject of tertiary prolification of both kinds, median and axillary. The tertiary median growths, like the primary flower, did not develop median buds, but only lateral ones—quaternary axillary prolification.