Excerpt from Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, 1879, Vol. 8
The posterior division of the column is here comparatively narrow, short, and truncated at the top, and it bears at the upper part of its inner (anterior) face a single anther; at the point of divergence of the two divisions on neither side is there the least trace of the usual Cypripedium anther. The flower is, therefore, monandrous in the strictest sense of the word. The anterior or stigmatic branch of the ordinary column makes a considerable angle with the common base, and the two lobes of of the stigma, as well as the crowning third lobe - the rostellum of the Monandre? - are placed transversely and are directed forwards. In the monster, on the contrary, the third lobe is suppressed, and the two longitudinally-placed stigmatic lobes are borne on a branch which is almost continuous with the common base, so that they look upwards as well as outwards (Figs. 5 and 6). Finally, as might with much safety be assumed, from the state of the stigma, the ovary is two-celled. The modified flowers have, therefore, a two-whorled four-membered perianth, a monandrous andr?cium and a dimerous gyn?cium. It is manifest that interest centres on the second of these peculiarities, and that two questions will be uppermost in the mind of every morphologist: first, what is the position of the single stamen? and secondly, what phylogenetic deductions, if any, are to be drawn from the anomaly? These questions I shall endeavour to answer as satisfactorily as possible.
A glance at the diagram (Fig. 7), the explanation of which is obvious, will suffice to show that the fibro-vascular bundles of the column are three in number, of which one, namely, that supplying the anther-bearing arm, is median, and evidently belongs to the outer whorl, while the other two proceed each towards a stigmatic lobe; but there is no trace of bundles corresponding in position to the letters a?, a?, a?, † and r of the diagram. There is, therefore, no room for doubting that the andr?cium of our monster is similar, allowance made for suppression, to that of ordinary Monandre?. The expectation of finding, in accordance with this interesting fact, cellular modifications associated with the morphological ones, was, however, nullified in every way, the anther having the many-layered endothecium and fully-evolved pollen-grains entangled in glutinous matter which mark the genus.
It will here be convenient to mention the published deviations from the usual structure of Cypripedium.
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