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C. Mas argenteo-variegata is another pretty shrub, the leaves being margined with clear white. C. NUTTALLII grows to fully 50 feet in height, and is one of the most beautiful of the Oregon and Californian forest trees. The flower bracts are of large size, often 6 inches across, the individual bracts being broad and white, and fully 2-1/2 inches long.

As a rule, the bracts are grown together with their axillary flower-stalk. This cohesion is not complete, nor is it always developed in the same degree. Sometimes it extends over a large part of the two organs, leaving only their tips free, but on other occasions it is limited to a small part of the base.

Moreover they exhibit a feature which is indicative of the presence of an abnormality. They are not all of the same size, but decrease in length from the base of the raceme upward, and finally slowly disappear. Besides these rare cases there are quite a number of cruciferous species on record, which have been observed to bear bracts.

On one hand, bracts may be met with in a few stray species, assuming the rank of a specific character. On the other hand they may be seen to occur as an anomaly, incompletely developed, often very rare and with all the appearance of an accidental variation, but sometimes so common as to seem nearly normal.

Lilies have a variety called Lilium candidum flore pleno, in which the flowers seem to be converted into a long spike of bright, white narrow bracts, crowded on an axis which never seems to cease their production. It is manifestly impossible to decide how all such sterile double flowers have originated.

The sterility was caused by the total lack of branches, including those bearing the pistillate flowers. The terminal spikes themselves were reduced to naked spindles, without branches, without flowers and even almost without bracts. In some individuals, however, this negative character was seen to give way at the tip, showing a few small naked branches.

This is of herbaceous growth, and remarkable for the large cream-coloured flower bracts, and showy red fruit. It is a small growing tree, with narrow, pointed leaves, and greyish coloured, smooth bark. Like many of its fellows, this species likes rather moist ground.

On the black rocks the gigantic rhubarb forms pale pyramidal towers a yard high, of inflated reflexed bracts, that conceal the flowers, and over-lapping one another like tiles, protect them from the wind and rain: a whorl of broad green leaves edged with red spreads on the ground at the base of the plant, contrasting in colour with the transparent bracts, which are yellow, margined with pink.

In fact, its bracts are found so often as to be considered by some authors as of quite normal occurrence. Contrasted with those of the above mentioned species of Sisymbrium, they are not seen at the base of all the flower stalks, but are limited to the lowermost part of the raceme, adorning a few, often ten or twelve, and rarely more flower-stalks.

The extreme points of some of the branchlets are rolled up so as to resemble the croziers or circinate vernation of ferns; the leaves or bracts, a, supposed to belong to the same plant, are described by Dawson as having inclosed the fructification. The remains of Psilophyton princeps have been traced through all the members of the Devonian series in America, and Dr.