In addition to the authorities already mentioned, the reader may consult Moquin-Tandon, 'El. Ter. Veg.,' p. 270. Turpin. 'Mem. greffe. Ann. Sc. Nat.,' ser. i, t. xxiv, p. 334. De Candolle, 'Organ. Veget.,' t. i. Duhamel, 'Phys. des Arbres,' t. i, p. 304, tab. xiii, xiv. Weber. 'Verhandl. Nat. Hist. Vereina f. d. Preuss. Rheinl. u. Westphal.,' 1860, p. 332, tab. vi. et vii. =Synspermy, or Union of the Seeds.=--Seeds may be united together in various degrees, either by their integuments,[55] or by their inner parts. Such union of the seeds, however, is of rare occurrence. It takes place normally, to a slight extent, in certain cultivated forms of cotton, wherein the seeds are aggregated together into a reniform mass, whence the term kidney cotton. Union of the parts of the embryo is treated under another head (see Synophty). =Adhesion between the axes of different plants.=--Under this head may be classed the union that takes place between the stems, branches, or roots of different plants of the same species, and that which occurs between individuals of different species; the first is not very different in its nature from cohesion of the branches of the same plant (figs. 21, 22). It finds its parallel, under natural circumstances, among the lower cryptogams, in which it often happens that several individual plants, originally distinct, become inseparably blended together into one mass. In the gardening operations of inarching, and to some extent in budding, this adhesion of axis to axis occurs, the union taking place the more readily in proportion as the contact between the younger growing portions of the two axes respectively is close. The huge size of some trees has been, in some cases, attributed to the adnation of different stems. This is said to be the case with the famous plane trees of Bujukdere, near Constantinople, and in which nine trunks are more or less united together.[56] [Illustration: FIG. 21.--Adhesion of two distinct stems of oak, or possibly cohesion of branches of the same tree. 'Gard. Chron.,' 1846, p. 252.]