=Production of leaves or scales in place of flower-buds.=--The position of the leaf and of the flower-buds respectively is, in most plants, well defined, but occasionally it happens that the former is formed where, under ordinary circumstances, the latter organ should be. This may happen without the formation of any transitional organs between the two, and without actual increase in the number of the buds. Where there is evidently a passage from leaf-bud to flower-bud, or _vice versa_, the case would be one of metamorphy. If the number of buds be augmented, or they be mixed with the flower-buds, then it would be referable to leafy prolification of the inflorescence. There remains a class of cases wherein there is a complete substitution of one structure for the other, it may be without the slightest indication of transition between the two, and without any admixture of leaf-buds among flower-buds, or any absolute increase in the number of organs, as in Prolification. Such a case is represented in fig. 78, which shows a portion of the stem of a species of _Valeriana_, bearing at the summit, not an inflorescence, but a tuft of leaves without the slightest indication of flowers. Drs. Hooker and Thomson relate that in Northern India the flowers of _Anemone rivularis_ are very generally absent, and their place supplied by tufts or umbels of leaves.[154] In the collection of the late Mr. N. B. Ward was a specimen of lupin in which the flowers were all absent, and their place supplied by tufts of leaves. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--Tuft of leaves replacing the inflorescence in a species of _Valeriana_.] A similar appearance has been noticed in _Compositae_, and I owe to the kindness of Professor Oliver the communication of a specimen of a species of _Bidens_ from Peru, in which the capitula, instead of consisting of florets, as usual, contained tufts of linear ciliolated bracts within the involucre, without a trace of flowers. In the eleventh volume of the 'Linnaea,' 1837, p. 301, Von Cesati figures and describes an analogous case in _Carduus crispus_. The same author[1] records a similar instance in the umbel of _Seseli coloratum_, where the place of the flowers was occupied by stalked tufts of leaves. In the 'Gardeners' Chronicle,' October 6th, 1860, p. 894, is mentioned an instance where the blossoms of the pea were entirely absent, and their place supplied by accumulations of small, ovate, green scales, thus presenting an appearance similar to that brought about by the inordinate multiplication of the sepals in the "wheat-ear carnation," and in the Sweet William, and not unlike the condition met with in _Bryophyllum proliferum_. In _Digitalis purpurea_ a similar anomaly is sometimes met with.