Of somewhat different nature to those above described was an anomaly described by M. Gay at a meeting of the Botanical Society of France, April 8th, 1859. The plant affected was _Leucoium æstivum_, and the changes observed were apparently attributable to a simple separation of two leaves that are usually contiguous. "Suppose," says M. Gay in describing this malformation, "the first leaf of the terminal bud separated by a long internode from the other leaves, which remain closely packed; and further, suppose an evident thickening of the upper portion of the lengthened internode, and there will be not only a single bulb, bearing with the leaves of the present year all the remnants of the leaves of the two preceding years, but two bulbs placed one above another, on the same axis, separated by the length of the internode."
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Unusual position of bulbs of tulip; the parent-bulb cut open.]
The formation of bulbs in the axils of the leaves, as happens occasionally in tulips, is further alluded to under the head of hypertrophy.
=Displacements affecting the inflorescence.=--These are, for the most part, dependent on hypertrophy, elongation, atrophy, spiral torsion, &c., but there are a few instances of a different nature, which may here be alluded to as not being coincident with any of the phenomena just mentioned. Sometimes these deviations from the ordinary position have the more interest as affecting characters used to distinguish genera; thus one of the distinctions between rye-grass (_Lolium_) and wheat (_Triticum_) resides in the relative position of the spikelets and the main stem; in _Triticum_ the spikelets are placed with their backs against the rachis, in _Lolium_ with one edge against it; but in a specimen of rye-grass that has come under my own observation, the arrangement was that of _Triticum_.
M. Kirschleger relates having found a specimen of _Leucanthemum pratense_, in which the ligulate female flowers were growing singly in the axils of the upper leaves of the stem.[91] The ordinary capitulum would here seem to have been replaced by a spike or a raceme. A less degree of this change wherein a few flowers may be found, as it were, detached from the ordinary capitulum may often be observed in _Compositæ_, _Dipsacaceæ_, &c. I have also met with specimens of _Lamium album_ in which some of the fascicles or clusters of flowers in place of being placed at the same level on opposite sides of the stem were placed alternately one above another.