On pseudodichotomy in Aloë transvaalensis O. Ktze.

In Aloe transvaalensis O. Ktze there are two, perhaps even three types of pseudodichotomy. The presence of the first type is correlated with the normal development of a terminal inflorescence, that of the second one with the more or less complete abortion of the latter. In these two types both branches are axillary shoots. Where no trace of an inflorescence can be detected, one of the branches may be regarded also as the continuation of the main shoot, and that case would represent then the third type. As there is however no difference in the arrangement of the leaves between the second and the third type, it is probably better to consider them as identical. In one plant a curious anomaly has been found, consisting in a fusion of the leaf sheaths into a continuous band which winds itself spirally round the stem. This anomaly makes it probable that the angle of divergence between the leaves in these plants is not somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120°, but in the neighboorhood of 240°. A dichotomously branched stem piece of Hyphaene coriacea Gaertn. has been studied, and it has been found that there was in this case no angular leaf, so that from the point of view of the morphologist the dichotomy of Hyphaene cannot be identical with that of the Lycopodiales and Filicales, although it is, nevertheless, probably a true dichotomy.