21
A rare abnormality, of which only two instances have so far been observed
by the writer, is for the male influence to be so strong, or the female so weak,
as to stop short at the formation, within the involving bract, of a normal female
perianth, not, however, sessile but at the end of a short prolongation of the
sub-bracteal pedicel ; inside the perianth are two stamens of which the anterior
has a filament and is perfect, the posterior a monstrous non-polliniferous sessile
anther with a broad connective, so incompletely developed that each of its
cells remains 2-chambered (PLATE 5, figs. 11-13).
Autenrieth considered the instances in which he found a prolongation of the axis with
spirally disposed ovaries, inside a whorl of sepals and stamens, to be examples of hermaphro-
ditism. The conclusion at first sight is not unnatural. But further reflection shows that
it must be erroneous since the ovaries he figures are really separate and complete female
flowers, and whether the sepals and stamens below be considered to constitute a male
flower or not, there is no question that the central axis represents precisely the converse of
such an inflorescence as one meets with in female plants of Mória type. This being
the case the question that arises is whether, in the whorl of sepals and stamens, con-
stituting what we are accustomed to consider a male Cannabis flower, we do not have an
instance of a compressed inflorescence rather than a true flower ; something, in fact, com-
parable with the inflorescence of an Euphorbia.
The instance recorded by Gasparrini, where the conditions usual in Mória inflores-
cences, instead of being reversed, are almost exactly repeated, strongly bears out this
suggestion ; here, however, from the other point of view, the claim that we have to deal
with a hermaphrodite flower is stronger and, but for Autenrieth's instructive example, the
question might have remained an open one.
Besides these, however, another claim has been made for the occurrence of herma-
phrodite flowers in Cannabis, the writer making it being Masters,1 the greatest living
authority on teratology. It is, however, as Penzig2 remarks, unfortunate that no detail
has been published of the precise conditions present in Masters' specimens, and it is not
certain whether he had before him flowers approximating to the Mória type, flowers
approximating to the Sheória type, or something quite unlike either and really hermaphrodite.
Some of the conditions noted by the writer as occurring in abnormal female flowers of
plants of the Sheória type have already been recorded by Autenrieth, 3 notably that in which
the flower is replaced by a solitary style ; and one of the most interesting of Autenrieth's
figures (tab. ii, fig. 21) represents what is very like an exact parallel of the condition shown
at the apex of a Aidria inflorescence (PLATE 5, fig. 3 ; fig. 16). Unfortunately Autenrieth
does not appear to have been aware of the existence of the true perianth, as it is not shown
in this or in any of the other figures that he gives of female hemp flowers. None of the
writer's examples of Sheória flowers quite accord with this of Autenrieth's, the nearest
approximation being that shown in PLATE 5, figs. 9, 10. In one or two of the cases where
the fruit had developed a ripe seed, the shrivelled remains of an attached anther, on the side
of the nut next the radicle, showed that there had been a staminody of the pistil. In these
cases sclerenchymatic hardening of the pericarp did not take place along the anterior (ex-
ternal) face opposite the radicle, this part of the wall of the nut remaining soft and flexible.
1 Vegetable Teratology, p. 197.
2
P f l a n s e n t e r a t o l o g i e ,
i i
.
:
Genua, 1894.
3 De discrimine sexuali, p. 7, t. ii.
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