3
SECTION II.—Normal Structure of the Flowers of Cannabis.
Male Flower. —In Cannabis the flowers are normally strictly dicecious so tha
those of the two sexes must be separately described. The male flower (PLATE 1,.
figs. 4-6), consists of a perianth of five free, regularly quincuncially imbricated,
somewhat unequal, oblong-lanceolate, pale-green, herbaceous segments. Oppo-
site each segment is a shortly stalked stamen ; the filament is slender and rather
shorter than the pendulous anther ; the anther is oblong, slightly narrowed upward,
2-celled and, when mature,. opens longitudinally (PLATE 1, figs. 5-10). There
is no trace, in a male flower of the normal type, where perianth-segments and
stamens are each whorled, of a rudimentary pistil within the staminal circle.
Mention has been made of hermaphrodite flowers in Cannabis by Autenrieth, 1 Gas-
parrini,2 and Masters. 3 Masters gives no details and does not state whether the abnormal
flowers occurred on plants of male or of female type. Gasparrini likewise does not say
clearly whether his hermaphrodite flowers were on plants of male or of female type; in any
case his examples indicate, as will be shown further on, a monœcious rather than a
hermaphrodite condition. Autenrieth's interesting observations were made on male plants
which he had pruned ; he found the new shoots giving, instead of male flowers, flowers in
which the sexes were mixed. Here again, if the writer's interpretation of the facts be
justified, the condition is not a hermaphrodite but a monœcious one, the existence of
which in Cannabis was first noted by Nees. 4
The question has received the especial attention of Briosi and Tognini5 and there is
no indication, from the histological side, that a carpellary whorl within the staminal whorl
has been suppressed. The co-existence of stamens and carpels, as shown in the drawings
both of Autenrieth and of Gasparrini, is either in the same spiral, or is collateral, that
is to say, in the same whorl.
Male Inflorescence. —The individual male florets are short-stalked and
drooping, and are aggregated in small paniculate cymes shorter than their leaves,
mostly on special floral branches (PLATE 1, figs. 1 and 2), though throughout
the greater part of the stem we find, at the base of these floral branches, in the
axils of the free stipules of their subtending leaves, a pair of these paniculate
cymes. These basal cymes, as a rule, are larger than any of those that follow
along the floral branch, and one of the two usually considerably exceeds the
other in size. The cymes along the floral branch also conform to this arrange-
ment ; they are in pairs, almost always unequal, in the axils of the stipules belonging
to the more or less reduced leaves that mark its nodes. But none of these leaves or
bracts, subsequent to the main-leaf in whose axil the floral branch arises, subtend
leafy branches ; the place of a branch has been found by Briosi and Tognini to be
1 De aiscrimine sexuali : Tubingen, 1821 ; p. 6, t. 2.
2 Ricerche sulla embriogenia della Canapa : Naples, 1862 ; p. 23, t. 3.
3 Vegetable Teratology : London, 1869, p. 197.
4 B e s c h r e i b u n g o f f i c i n e l l e r P f l a n s e n : Düsseldorf, 1829; disp. 6.
5 Intorno all' anatomia della Canapa : Milan, 1894; i. p. 84.