Medical Officers of the Army of India.
49
Each of these flowers (see Plate X, Fig. 5) consists of a simple perianth, con-
sisting of three rounded, concave, hyaline pieces which surround a single stamen.
The stamen consists of a broad two-celled anther, with a short filament. There
is no trace in the male flower of any female organ or pistil. The anther pro-
duces pollen, and, when this pollen is mature, the loculi of the anther open by
longitudinal dehiscence to allow it to escape. The male element in these
antheriferous flowers is therefore perfect. The whole of the remaining space
on the inner walls of the cavity below the zone of male flowers is occupied
by pseudo-female or gall flowers. These gall flowers (see Plate X, Fig. 6)
are borne on rather long, thick, fleshy pedicels, but they have no obvious
perianth. Each pedicel has, near its apex, a small sub-globular ovary, from
one side of which, just under the apex, there arises a short, smooth style.
The style bears at its apex a stigma, which, however, is in many cases destitute
of the loose, viscid, papillose parenchyma so characteristic of the true stigma.
On opening the ovaries of these flowers, no ovule or seed is discovered. They
are either empty, or they contain the pupa of an insect, a species of Blastophaga
or a species of so-called Ichneumon. These flowers, fashioned like females and
shut up in a closed cavity with a number of perfect males, are all absolutely
barren. The pollen of the males is shed for them in vain, and in the ovaries
where one would expect to find an embryonic fig, there is either an empty
space or the pupa of an intruding insect.
The second set of figs is externally undistinguishable from the former,
and on making a vertical section of one of them the general internal arrange-
ments are seen to be similar. The mouth is closed by the same kind of inter-
locking scales, so that the cavity of the flask is completely closed. But, in
figs of this second sort, no trace of a male or gall flower is anywhere to be
found. The whole area of the inner walls is occupied by perfectly formed
female flowers, each of which produces a single seed. In general appearance
these fertile females (Plate X, Fig. 7) resemble the pseudo-female or gall flowers,
and, like these, they have no obvious perianth. These fertile female flowers
differ, however, from the galls in having a longer, more lateral style, which is
hairy, not smooth, and which is crowned by a cylindric stigma formed of true
stigmatic parenchyma. , But, above all, the fertile female flowers differ from
the gall flowers in having larger ovaries, in each of which there is produced a
perfect seed and never the pupa of an insect. We have thus the extraordinary
phenomena presented of a set of female flowers, functionally barren, associated
in the same receptacles with a number of functionally fertile males; while in the
cavities of a different set of receptacles there are enclosed a set of perfectly
formed female flowers associated with which there is not a single male! And
yet these females, with apparently such poor opportunities of becoming fer-
tilized, are all fertile; while those shut up with the males are all barren! Or, to
state the matter in another way,—the privilege of being associated with the male
H