The native flowers and ferns of the United States in their botanical, horticultural and popular aspects

A 4st

o
1A,

See
Dees
pra

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Mao" University Library
QK_ 112.M49
a = a ‘

TMT

olinovel

Cornell University

Bleria

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024538963

THE

NATIVE FLOWERS AND FERNS

OF THE UNITED STATES

IN THEIR BOTANICAL, HORTICULTURAL, AND
POPULAR ASPECTS.

BY

THOMAS MEEHAN,

PROFESSOR OF VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY TO THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE BOARD
OF AGRICULTURE, EDITOR OF THE GARDENERS’
MONTHLY, ETC... EPC.

SERIES Il VOLUME I.

ILLUSTRATED BY CHROMOLITHOGRAPHS

BOSTON:
L. PRANG AND COMPANY.

Vel se

CopyricHT, A.D 1880,
By CHAS. ROBSON & CO.

PREFACE TO: SERIES I,

HEN the first series of “The Flowers and Ferns of the United
States” was issued, the hope was expressed that although that
work should be complete in itself, the public would welcome

another, or even successive series; unvil, peradventure, the whole Flora
of the United States should be included. It is pleasant to the author to
know that part of this hope is realised, indeed all of the hope that can
be realised up to the present time.

Not the least among the author's gratifications is the complimentary
manner in which the work has been received by his botanical associates.
It was a task rarely attempted, to bring exact botanical knowledge toa
level with popular comprehension,—to give it a place among a great
variety of the more cultivated branches of knowledge,—and, above all, to
accommodate such a work to the popular purse. That this could be
successfully accomplished the author had the courage to hope, but he
was scarcely prepared for the cordiality with which eminent men of
science have received this people’s work as an acceptable contribution to
scientific literature. Amongst these the author has especially to make
his acknowledgments to Professor Asa Gray, who in “Silliman’s Journal
of the Arts and Sciences” for May, 1879, compares the drawings not
unfavorably with those of Mr. Sprague, who for many years has been at
the head of botanical drawing in this country. Considering the very low
price at which this work is supplied, the fact that Professor Gray should
have been led to compare it with the best and most expensive botanical
work in our country, must be accepted as very high praise.

We may now only say that while the publication of the work has been
transferred to the American Natural History Publishing Company, Lim-
ited, of Philadelphia, an association organized primarily for the purpose,

Messrs. Prang & Co.’s excellent artist, Mr. Alois Lunzer, will still make
(3)

4 PREFACE TO SERIES II.

the drawings, and the same well-known firm continue to execute the
Lithographic plates. The same assistance will be extended by numerous
correspondents all over the United States; and with the increased love
of the task which the success of the first venture brings to the author, he
hopes to make this second “General View of the Native Flowers and
Ferns of the United States,” at least as interesting as the first.

Special acknowledgments of friendly aid will appear as the work pro-
gresses; but more than this is due to Professor C. S. Sargent, of the
Cambridge Botanic Garden, to Mr. Jackson Dawson, the gardener at
the Arnold Arboretum of the Bussey Institute, and to Mr. John H. Red-
field, the conservator of the Herbarium of the Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia, for continuous and generous assistance on
frequent occasions.

THOMAS MEEHAN.

GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA, May, 1870.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME

SECOND SERIES.

SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.

xummond’s Pitcher Plant ‘ a * 4 *

ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA.

Cut-leaved Engelmann Flower 2 5 = -

DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOLIUS.
Sand-paper Star Wort. : : : . 2

ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.

Sensitive Fern ‘ ‘ * : . : ”

SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.
Parrot-headed Pitcher Plant . r ii 5 é

LILtIuM CANADENSE.

American Yellow Lily . - x ‘ * %

SOLANUM TORREYI.

Torrey’s Solanum . « é ie F - :

) PoLYPoDIUM CALIFORNICUM.
Californian Polypody : P ‘ : : %

SARRACENIA RUBRA.
Red-flowered Trumpet Leaf.—Walter’s Sarracent+

IMPATIENS FULVA.

Spotted Touch-me-not, or Snap-weed ‘ ‘
IRIS VERNA.

Spring Iris. 3 3 . ‘ . :
WooDsIA OBTUSA.

Common Woodsia R ‘ : : Fi

PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA.
Bipinnate Phacelia ‘ ‘ 7 A

(vn)

PAGE

13

17

25

29

33

37

4t

45

ag

53

Vill CONTENTS OF VOLUME

RUDBECKIA FULGIDA.
Brilliant Cone Flower. ‘

CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.

Stemless Moccasin Flower %

CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS.
Walking Leaf : j °

POLEMONIUM REPTAN’
Creeping Greek Valerian ‘

CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS.
Large Yellow Moccasin Flower

EUPHORBIA MARGINATA.

Snow on the Mountain . ¥

\SPIDIUM FRAGRANS,

Sweet Shield Fern a *

ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM.

Poor Robin’s Viantam . %

PINGUICULA LUTEA.

Yellow Butterwort . 5

ANEMONE VIRGINIANA.
Tall Anemone.—Thimble Weed

CHEILANTHES VESTITA.
Hairy Lip Fern ‘ . °

Tris MISSOURIENSTS.

Rocky Mountain Iris 3 é
SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA.

Elm-leaved Golden Rod P

SICYOS ANGULATUS.

Star Cucumber G ‘3 é

ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.

Scott’s Spleenwor :

COMMELYNA VIRGINICA.

Common Day Flower. é
NYMPH/EA FLAVA.

‘Audubon’s Yellow Water Lily
CROOMIA PAUCIFLORA.

Few-flowered Croomia . is

ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE.
Sierra Nevada Shieid Fern,

°

PAGE

° e . : . Tor

. 3 3 > 105
; Z ‘ : » 109
7 é ‘ : » 113
e i ; 117
3 12%

: e : a h25

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I, 1X

PAGE
NYMPHEA ODORATA.

Sweet-scented Water Lily ° ° ° °

LoBELIA FEAYANA.

Dr. Feay’s Lobelia ‘ ° ° ° a : : 2 137

CYNTHIA DANDELION.
The Dandelion Cynthia ow a Me af. ee en eee

CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES.
The Horned Fern e oe. Se ee ee ee ee ee ©

ARIS/EMA TRIPHYLLUM,
Three-leaved Indian Turnip . a 2 c ° 2 0 « « 149

GERANIUM MACULATUM.
. Spotted Crane’s-bill Fa , : F ; fs ° ° € o «153

CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS.

Large-fruited Evening Primrose. ° ° 2 ° ° ° ° 157

ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.
Chamisso’s Shield Fern , é ® ° ° ° ° ° ° . I6I

STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.
The Stenosiphon . ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° » 165

ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM.
Crowned Lily ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° >» 169

CASSIA CHAMAECRISTA.

Sensitive Pea . ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° » 173

GYMNOGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS.
California Gold Fern, ° e <3 ° B ° ° ° o 197

LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS.
Scarlet Trumpet Honeysuckie ° ‘ ° 6 ee) aie ° o ~=«ESE

CHELONE GLABRA.
Turtle-head . . r ° ° ° ° 2 0 ° ° o «6185

TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.
Silky Townsend Flower ‘ ‘ - ° ° o> Je -<6 2 189

POLYPODIUM FALCATUM.
Sickle-leaved Polypod, or Liquorice Fern. z 7 23 ‘ ° «193

SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.

L. PRANG & Company, Bc

PLATE 1..

‘ ‘ u .
F ‘
4 , ;
- Ae ‘
ee ‘ i : : =
F wee ‘ e
: ae:

SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.

DRUMMOND’S PITCHER-PLANT.

NATURAL ORDER, SARRACENIACEA.

SARRACENIA DRUMMONDI, Croom.— Leaves elongated, erect, trumpet-shaped, narrowly
winged; lamina erect, rounded, short-pointed, hairy within, and like the upper portion of
the tube white, variegated with reticulated purple veins. Leaves two feet long. Scapes
longer than the leaves. Flowers three inches wide. (Chapman’s F/ora of the Southern
United States. See also Wood’s Class-Book of Botany, under the name of S. Gronovii,
var, Drummiondit.)

Sy: ONGFELLOW, in describing an old-time slave hiding

from his pursuers in a southern swamp, says:

“ Where will-o’-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake: :
Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake:

«Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair.”

It is not often that a poet writing with one subject only in
view, at the same time happens to paint the portrait of something
entirely absent from his mind. Yet every one who has collected
Drummond's pitcher-plant will recognize a very fair picture of
it amidst its surroundings in the lines quoted. It is a car-
nivorous plant, secreting in its pitcher-like leaves water into
which insects are enticed, drowned, and eaten, as some botanists
say. Besides growing among poisonous vines spotted like the
snake, it is itself spotted; and just where the waving “Spanish
moss” shrouds the pine, and in swamps where a human foot can

(5)

6 SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.—-DRUMMOND’S PITCHER-PLANT.

scarcely pass, it seems as like a wild beast as it “crouches” and
waits for its prey as any plant can be. The genus is confined
wholly to the Atlantic portion of the United States, and because
of their very remarkable form must have been among the first
of America’s plants to receive marked attention from the white
man on his arrival in the new world. It is believed to have
been referred to by John Henry Bauhin, who published a history
of plants in Switzerland, about the year 1650. The name
Sarracema is, however, of comparatively recent origin, having
been given to the genus by Tournefort, a distinguished French
botanist who flourished at the opening of our present century,
in honor of Dr. Sarrazin, whom Milne calls “an ingenious French-
man, and who introduced several Canadian plants into Euro-
pean gardens.” Our text-books tell little more than this of him.
Gray’s “School Botany” merely says, “named for Dr. Sarrasin,
of Quebec,” and this is repeated in the same author’s “ Manual,”
except that the name is spelled Sarrazin. Professor Wood
makes it “ Dr. Sarrazen,” so that the student has the choice of
three orthographic forms. The Botanical Editor of Rees’ “ En-
cyclopedia” uses the form employed by Professor Gray in the
“Manual,” and does not seem to think that the credit of intro-
ducing “several Canadian plants” does him justice, for he gives
the following account of him: “Sarracenia was so named by
Tournefort, in honor of his friend, Dr. Sarrazin, of Quebec, who
collected numerous plants in Canada, specimens of which are
still in the Herbarium of the Museum of Natural History at
Paris. While they lay there for ages unnoticed, the discovery
of the same plants has been attributed to more recent travellers,
who, indeed, could know nothing of Dr. S.’s acquisitions.”
Having given some account of the origin of its botanical
name, we may devote a short space to its common one of “ Side-
saddle flower,” by which many of the family, as well as this
particular species, are often known. The stigma of the Sarracenia
consists of a broad plate; or, rather, there are “five stigmas
united into a large peltate persistent membrane, covering the

SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.—DRUMMOND’'S PITCHER-PLANT. 7

ovary and stamens,” as Professor Wood explains it. When the
flower is fully expanded and recurved, the petals seem to hang
between the up-curved angles of this persistent membrane,
which membrane, according to Curtis, in the “ Botanical Maga-
zine,’ is “like a side-saddle, the petals hanging out from the
angles like a lady’s legs.” Nuttall, however, does not seem to
agree with this account, or that “Side-saddle flower” is even
an American name. He says: “The most curious plant of the
class Polyandria” (the Linnaan system prevailed in that day,
and Sarracenia was then referred to this class) “is undoubtedly
the peculiar North American genus Sarracenia, termed in Eng-
land the Side-saddle flower, or rather leaf, as the resemblance
only exists there to the old-fashioned side-saddle.” One would
judge from this expression of Nuttall’s that the name of “Side-
saddle” flower was not the common one by which it was known
in this country, but was given to itin England. Yet this hardly
agrees with Gronovius’ “Flora Virginica,” wherein is a note
attributed to Clayton, of Virginia, which says,—he is evidently
referring to the Sarracema variolarts,— This is commonly called
Side-saddle flower; and in North Carolina, the Trumpet flower.”

The name of Drummondii was given to this species by
Croom, a very promising American botanist, who collected
industriously through the Southern States, but whose useful
career was cut short by a marine accident; and it is a little
remarkable that Drummond, an enthusiastic Scotch collector, the
one for whom the plant was named, should also have died at
Havana, far away from home and friends, when on a collecting
tour. Thus, Croom and Drummond, both in a measure victims
to science, happily have their names associated in the history of
this beautiful flower.

One of the most interesting facts connected with our plant is
its fly-catching power, already referred to, which this species has
in common with other Savracenzas. There is not only the secre-
tion of water in the pitcher-like leaves, but a secretion of sweet
liquid is found on the surface, which it is believed is in pursu-

8 SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII.—DRUMMOND’S PITCHER-PLANT.

ance of a design of nature to allure insects to destruction.
They come for the honeyed juice, which is supposed to intoxicate
them, when they fall into the little well of water, are drowned,
and then consumed by the plant. “Drummond's Side-saddle
flower” has figured particularly in this character. In ‘“Silliman’s
Journal,” for 1873, Dr. Gray says: “Sarracenia Drummondi is
the species which most closely resembles S. flava in the shape
and structure of the pitcher. We now learn from a letter
addressed by Dr. Chapman to Mr. Canby, that the former is well
aware of a similar (sweet) secretion in that species. ‘On the
inside of the hood,’ he writes, ‘there is a very faintly sweetish
secretion, scarcely perceptible to the taste, which is very attrac-
tive to insects; and as | do not detect any of this within the
tube I wonder how it is so many insects are entrapped, since
they could easily fly away from the open hood.’”

“Drummond’s Side-saddle flower” is found in the seaboard
States, from Virginia to Florida. It is a very variable species,
and this induced Professor Wood to group a number of varieties
under one name—S. Gronovi. Among the variations is one
with a pure white pitcher; that is to say, without the colored
veining, This is known to florists as Sarracenia Drummondi
alba; and as the flower remains of a beautiful red, the contrast is
pleasing, and the variety is highly prized in England.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Root-stock with flowers and pitcher-like leaves. 2. Upper
section of trumpet-like leaf. 3. Enlarged portion of a wing of the leaf.

EN

fF

H
|
L

LMANNIA PINNA’

2

\
7.

ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA.
CUT-LEAVED ENGELMANN FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITA.

ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA, Torrey and Gray.—A perennial branching, rough and hirsute
herb with branching stems, corymbose paniculate at the summit, and bearing several small
heads on slender peduncles. Leaves alternate, strigose, oblong or ovate lanceolate, ir-
regularly pinnatifid, with the segments lanceolate or linear (the lower longest or divaricate),
sessile, the radical petiolate and bipinnatifid. Rays yellow, terdily deciduous, pubescent
externally, Heads many-flowered; the ray flowers equal in number to the inner scales
of the involucre (eight to ten) and situated in their axils, ligulate, pistillate; involucre in
three series, coriaceo-chartaceous, broadly ovate or obovate, appressed, the exterior short-
est, all abruptly narrowed into a foliaceous lanceolate or linear spreading appendage, the
exterior exceeding the scale itself in length. Receptacle flat; the chaff persistent, char-
taceous, with foliaceous and hairy tips, partly involute and enclosing the sterile flowers ;
the outer series lanceolate acute, two firmly adherent to the base of each involucral scale;
the others very narrowly linear, rather obtuse. Corolla of the ray with an oblong exserted
sessile ligule; of the disc dilated upwards, fine-toothed, the teeth somewhat hairy, style in
the sterile flowers undivided hispid. Achenia of the ray equal in size to the concave inner
involucral scales to which they are applied, oval-obovate, obcompressed, convex and car-
inate externally, flat or concave, and one-ridged on the inside, scabrous pubescent, not
winged or toothed, crowned with two small scarious lanceolate concave marcescent squa-
melle, which are more or less united at the base, hispid and fringed; those of the disc
filiform, abortive, with a minute coroniform pappus. (Torrey and Gray’s Flora of North
America.)

“HEN ‘proposing to ourselves to prepare the present
work, it was not our intention to make it botanical

in its strictest sense, but that while botanically accurate, it
should rather be a work for the whole people. Hence it was
decided to give only the characters of the species in full, con-
fining the text to those facts in relation to the genera and the
orders, which might serve to illustrate some general lesson. By
the long quotation we have now given from Torrey and Gray, it
might be supposed we had forgotten this original plan, and the

’ may startle some who have

long paragraph of “hard words’
(9)

10 ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA.—CUT-LEAVED ENGELMANN FLOWER.

not advanced far into botanical technicalities. But the fact is,
that even from the popular standpoint, it is a piece of good for-
tune that we have been obliged to make this long quotation, as
it offers a chance for some popular lessons, not often afforded to
us, in relation especially to the structure of composite, or Aster-
like plants.

In the first place we may say, that Exge/mannia pinnatifida is
the only known species of the genus, and as there is no other
to compete with it for family honors, no specific characters are
given. The generic character includes the specific to some
extent, and makes a specific description unnecessary. Hence,
what we have given shows how little the description of a species
may have to do witha plant's essential character, and this affords
a good lesson. But the main one is to note with what accuracy a
careful botanist can describe a plant, and then the faithfulness with
which a good artist can reproduce an original. Occasionally an
artist gets some help in his study from a botanical description,
and may be tempted to make his drawing agree therewith when
perhaps the plant before him would scarcely warrant it. This
may arise from a fear that he may not have seen the parts
exactly as they are, or not have had a “typical” form to draw
from. In this instance our artist had nothing but the living
plant to work by, and it is interesting to note how the details
given fit in with the botanical description of the learned authors
quoted. The rough and hirsute character of the herb is very
well shown, The corymbous character (the flower stalks all
coming out nearly together and all about the same length) is
seen at Fig. 1. The alternate leaves show at Fig. 2, 2, and they
have the exact form and characters described; the root leaf (3)
being petiolate or on a stalk, and the upper one (4) being
sessile. The manner in which the rays are tardily deciduous is
well shown at 5 by the three lingering petals on the faded flower,
and the fresh flowers show the number of ray petals as given.
How the ray flower is situated in the axils of the inner scales is
shown at 6. The three-seried involucre is seen at 7 with the

ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA.—CUT-LEAVED ENGELMANN FLOWER. 11

exterior row the shortest, and all abruptly narrowed at 8. The
“receptacle flat” (8) shows a slight variation—“flattish” might
answer, but scarcely flat. At 9 we have the persistent chaff,
foliaceous, and with hairy tip, partly enclosing the sterile flower
(10); those adherent to the involucral scale we see at 11. The
oblong ligule of the ray floret we have at 12, and the sterile one
(10) dilated, that is swelling, upward and fine-toothed. At 13
we have the undivided hispid style. The akene or seed we
need not number, but its equal length to the scale on the back, its
form, with the one ridge in front, as it is crowned with the
fringed scales, are accurately given.

By tracing thus how well botanist and artist have done their
several parts, we are able at the same time to aid the student, by
the references, to a familiarity with the various parts of the
flower. The difference between the ray floret (10) and the
fertile floret (12) is very striking. The perfect pistil (14) we
see is deeply divided into two branches, while in the disc floret
the pistil (13) develops no further than to a mere thread incapable
of performing any function. The mass of stamens, however,
which we see at 15, perfect pollen, and it is from these that the
stigmas (14) receive it. Most of the composite plants we have
so far had occasion to figure have had fertile disc florets, and
the chance to study a case where the facts are reversed will be
very interesting to the student.

Torrey and Gray, from the work we have quoted, say: “This
genus intermediate between Sz/phium and FPartheniun, is dedi-
cated to our esteemed correspondent, Dr. George Engelmann,
of St. Louis, Missouri, who has for several years assiduously
studied the plants of Missouri, Arkansas, etc., and made valu-
able contributions to many European collections, as well as to
this work.” This was in 1840. Since then Dr. Engelmann has
added immensely to his botanical fame, by continuous and valua-
ble botanical work. Although a physician in extensive practice,
he takes up, between the times spent in professional duties,
special and difficult genera, and thoroughly masters them. ‘Thus

I2 ENGELMANNIA PINNATIFIDA.—CUT-LEAVED ENGELMANN FLOWER.

he is esteemed by the botanical world as its leading authority on
American Oaks, Coniferous trees, Agaves, Yucca, Cuscuta, Juncus
or the Rushes, Cactacez and many others. He is not a native
of this country, but was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, on the
2d of February, 1809, so that he is now in his seventieth year,
and is still actively engaged in his favorite study. He pub-
lished his first botanical work in Germany; came to the United
States in 1832, when but twenty years of age; and, two years later,
settled in St. Louis, where he has ever since remained. No
American botanist is more esteemed for his many virtues as well
as for his work than Dr. Engelmann, and we are glad that he
will be ever remembered in connection with this pretty flower.

Nuttall, who collected this plant, thought it was a species of
Silphium. No other species but the one we figure has been
found, though a marked variety is noted in the account of Lind-
heimer’s Texan plants. Dr. Torrey in the Axzals of the New
York Lyceum, published in 1820, notices the species as having
been collected by Dr. James on the Canadian river. Nuttall
and Dr. Leavenworth are credited with collecting it on the Red
river, in Arkansas; Drummond found it in Texas; and Marcy’s
expedition in the Witchita mountains.

For the opportunity of making our drawing we are indebted
to the Bussey Institution, where it was growing under the care
of Mr. Jackson Dawson, of the Arnold arboretum.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—See text.

Vo. IIL Pate 3.

DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOLIUS.

L.. PRANG & ComMPANY, Boson.

DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOLIUS.

~ SANDPAPER STAR-WORT

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITE.

DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOLIUS, Hooker.—Stem straight, roughish; branches one-flowered, fasti-
giate; scales imbricate, carinate, as long as the disk; leaves linear, entire, one-veined,
mucronate, carinate, rough, rigid, those of the branches recurved. Stems sub-simple, pur-
plish, about one foot high. Leaves numerous, obtuse, with a small mucronate point,
shining above. Branchlets near the top, leafy, each with one rather large and showy,
violet-colored head. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also Gray’s Manual of Botany .
of the Northern United States, and Chapman's /ora of the Southern United States.)

Wai LARGE number of the composite or asteraceous plants

: of our country have a somewhat coarse foliage or habit
of growth, with which the present elegant species is in strik-
ing contrast. In some parts of the world, the Cape of Good
Hope especially, there are many with such a slender and pleas-.
ing habit as this; and indeed a first glance at our species by
one familiar with the vegetation of those distant parts of the
world would create the impression, in the absence of positive
knowledge, that it was an exotic plant. Indeed; there are species
of this same genus, Diplopappus, native to the Cape of Good
Hope as well as to the United States. These relationships with
the Flora of such distant parts of the world are always of great
interest to the student of botanical geography. The species,
however, are not very numerous there or here. Even allowing
for some which may perhaps rightfully belong to other genera,
there may not be many over a couple of dozen of species in all.
It was originally classed with Asver; and in fact there is very
little beyond the general habit and appearance to distinguish it.
The “Treasury of Botany” tells us the genus is “very near Aster,
and only differing in the nature of the pappus, which is double, the

(3)

14 DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOL‘tUS.— SANDPAPER STAR-WORT.

outer row of short, stiff bristles, the inner of capillary bristles as
long as the disk florets; while in As/ex the pappus is single.”
The fact is, this is one of those cases where general appearance
suggests differences which science can scarcely find. Very few
would take our present species for an Aster when first found.
Its general resemblance is with the genus known as Diflopappus,
but in this species the student will scarcely find the double pap-
pus, the outer row being nearly wanting. In preparing our Fig.
2, it was a point to show this, but it is so very small that without
a larger diagram it cannot be seen. Our botanical text-books
scarcely give a correct idea of the small size. Dr. Chapman
merely says of all the genus, “pappus of capillary bristles in two
rows, the outer row much shorter,” with nothing as to the length
in this species. Dr. Gray in the “Manual” says the “ outer series

’

is of very short, stiff bristles,’ and “very short bristles” in the
“School Botany.” Professor Wood alone comes down to figures,
and he tells us that the exterior pappus is “half a line long,”
which is one twenty-fourth of an inch. It is a slender character
to build a genus on, and which perhaps would not have been
thought of in this connection only for the very different habit and
appearance of the group from As/er in general, as already noted.
Dr. Gray, indeed, classes it as Aster finariifolius in “ School
Botany,” though he notes that this is “of the old botanists, but
is strictly Diplopappus linarirfolius.”

The name Diflopappus is from two Greek words—a7ploos,
double, and fapfpus, an old man; the latter name in botany has
been given to the usually gray hair-like crown which surmounts
the seeds in so many compound flowers, and is especially like a
gray head in the well-known Dandelion. In our Tig. 2 we see
what is known as the “inner row” of the pappus, almost enclos-
ing the floret, as the little flower is called. :

As already noted by Dr. Gray, the plant was known as Aséter
by the older botanists, and under this name it appears in Ray's
Catalogue about the end of the seventeenth century as the “nar-
row rosemary-leaved aster of Maryland,” that celebrated author

DIPLOPAPPUS LINARITFOLIUS.—SANDPAPER STAR: WORT, 15

having perhaps been made acquainted with it by his correspondent,
the Rev. John Bannister. Linnzus knew it as Aster Minaritfoltus,
Michaux as Aster rigzdus, and Nuttall included it in his genus
Chrysopsis as C. tinarifolia. The genus Diplopappus was founded
by Cassini in a paper published in a Paris magazine in the early
part of the present century. The genus Aséer is so very large
that though the distinction between it and Diplopappus is small,
the division, if at all well founded, must be acceptable to students.
It will be noted by those fond of accuracy that the common con-
struction of the specific name, linariifolius—that is, “leaves like
or belonging to the linaria’”—is not according to Latin rules.
Linaria should form its genitive linariz=linarizfolius, and we
have to acknowledge our ignorance of any valid reason for the
orthography in general use.

The snecies affords a very pretty botanical lesson in the devel-
opment of its axial buds to branches, and these again to flowers.
As we see in our plate, no buds grow from the axils of the lower
leaves, but gradually a few axillary leaves appear as the stem
elongates, until the latter is suddenly suppressed, when the axial
growths become stronger, and while some of them never become
more than little branches, others go on to complete flowers. The
sudden arrest of growth iu the main stem accelerates that of the
branchlets, and we can see that it was this sudden stoppage of
growth at the apex which gave the graded impulse downwards,
and which resulted in the growth of the axial buds. Precisely
the same effect is produced in any growing shoot by artificially
arresting its growth—that is, by pinching out its terminal bud.
We know that these sudden arrests or sudden accelerations of
growth are the foundation of many wonderful changes in the
forms of flowers and the general characters of plants; but atten-
tion having but recently been drawn to these simple facts, the
laws which induce these rythmic growths are not yet understood.

Besides furnishing a valuable lesson in Lotany, it is a beautiful
plant; and those who grow it in gardens generally esteem it
highly on this account. It is one of the last of floral charms to

16 DIPLOPAPPUS LINARIIFOLIUS. —SANDPAPER STAR-WORT,

leave us, the seeds being scarcely mature in Pennsylvania by the
time the severe frosts come. The height of its season in that
' State is October, though it commences to flower in September.
Prof. Wood places it a month earlier than this. It is generally
found in dry, hilly, rather open woods, from Canada to Florida,
along the Atlantic coast; but it lessens its northern range as it
proceeds west, and is not found on the other side of the Missouri
or Mississippi.

It is more favored than many of its allies in being of some use
to man in other ways beside its beauty, for in South Carolina,
where it is rather abundant, the leaves are used as a substitute
for sandpaper in polishing horn.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—I. Branch from several that formea a tow cushy p.ant.
2. Magnified disk floret.

PLATE 4.

Vo . Ill

At yy f YY
ONOCLBA SENSIBILIS.

L. PRANG & COMPANY

ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.

SENSITIVE FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS, Linnzeus.—Sterile fronds oblong-triangular; pinnz lanceolate,—the lower
ones distinct, pinnatifid-dentate,—the upper confluent, repand-dentate, or entire. Sterile
frond six to fifteen inches long, and five to twelve inches wide at the base; lower pinnze
three to six inches long; stipe six to ten inches long, slender, angular, naked. Fertile
fronds four to eight or ten inches long; pinnz one to three inches long, nearly erect; pin-
nules triangular-globose, smoothish, dark brown, resembling berries in two-rowed unilat-
eral spikes; stipes eight to twelve inches long, rather stout, terete, naked. (Darlington’s
Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Flora of the Northern United States, Chapman’s Flora
of the Southern United States, Wood's Class-Book of Botany, and Williamson’s Ferns of
Kentucky.)

#§OST intelligent persons know that according to the mod-
ern discoveries in geology, plants existed on the earth

ages before man made his appearance thereon; and that in
regard to the plants themselves, numerous races have lived
and died of which we know nothing now beyond a few traces
here and there of a few species which have been preserved to us
in the shape of fossil remains. As to the manner of the appear-
ance and disappearance of these races, as the ages followed each
other in due course, there are differences of opinion. Some
believe that the newer forms have been evolved from the older
ones by slow and almost imperceptible degrees. We find, in
our time, by closely watching seedling plants, that no two are
exact reproductions of their parents, or exactly like each other;
and if we are not disposed to think that these variations revolve
in a circle, but are continuously in a direct line, it will not be dif-
ficult to believe that the accumulation of small differences may
in time present a structure very different from what we may
imagine the first parent to have been. In this way those who

(17)

18 ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.— SENSITIVE FERN.

are known as Evolutionists account for the great variations
between living forms and those which existed in the earlier
geologic ages. There are other scientific men who regard
these differences between the early and recent floras as the result
of sudden geologic or cosmic catastrophes, destroying existing
forms, and almost contemporaneously succeeding with new
ones; and who believe that if any did not happen to come
wholly within the range of these great disturbing influences,
there would be no reason why a form might not continue without
material change for countless ages.

These geological discussions have a peculiar interest in con-
nection with our present subject, the Sensitive Fern, for its
remains are found in some very old geological formations in
which vegetable remains exist, and precisely in the form in
which we find it now. According to Professor Dawson, of
Montreal, it was in existence near the Cretacean age, or that
time in the earth’s history when only reptiles crawled over the
surface, and the mammalian or sucking animals had not yet
appeared. In Dr. Dawson’s own language, in his address to
the Natural History section of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, delivered at Detroit in 1875, he
says: “In a collection of fossil plants from what may be termed
beds of transition from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary, I find
among other modern species two recent ferns most curiously
associated. One is the common Onoclea sensibilis, found now
very widely over North America, and which in the so-called mio-
cene times (about the middle of the mammalian era preceding
man) lived in Europe also. The other is Davatlha tennifolia,.. .
still abundant on the other side of the Pacific (and Dr. Dawson
might have added, still growing with the Oxoclea there). These
little ferns are thus probably older than the Rocky Mountains
and the Himalayas, and reach back to a time when Mesozoic
Dinosaurs were becoming extinct, and the earliest Placental
mammals being introduced. Shall we say that these two ferns,
and along with them our two species of Hazel and many other

ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.—SENSITIVE FERN. 19

familiar plants, have propagated themselves unchanged for half
a million years?” It is impossible to look on this beautiful fern
without a species of veneration for its wonderful antiquity.

Some have thought, however, that it shows some disposition to
change, and have named one supposed variation— O. od/usilobata.
But even this has been ascertained in modern times to be only a
phase of development in the transformation of the frond to the
reproductive condition, for the mass of fruit (Fig. 3) is nothing
but the frond (Fig. 2) in a very much changed state. If we take
any fern, say the common Polypody, we shall see that the first
leaves are barren, that is, have no fruit dots on their under sur-
faces, while others are completely covered with sori or fruit dots.
Still there is a general resemblance between the fertile fronds
and the fronds with sori on them. But in the case of our sensi-
tive fern, the portions of the frond on which the fruit dots are
placed have rolled backwards and completely enveloped the
mass of sori, giving to this fruiting “frond” the appearance of
a cluster of “berries,” as Dr. Darlington expresses it. Now, the
variety obtusilobata is simply a frond in an imperfectly developed
fertile condition. There are fewer sori on the frond than in the
form we generally see, and the lobes do not recurve very much,
but retain a good portion of the regular frondose condition.
This form is not unfrequently met with, and is very welcome to
the young student as giving the key to the structure of the more
advanced fruiting frond.

The manner in which this fertile frond succeeds the barren one
will be found particularly interesting to the close observer. Fig.
4 is a portion of the rhizoma or underground stem taken in early
_winter. The first leaves of the season come out in a nearly
simultaneous pair, Figs. 5, 5, and seem attached to the side of
the rhizoma like a pair of grasshopper legs. After this effort
others are produced which never reach a condition beyond long,
slender scales, Figs. 7, 7. About the middle of summer another
single one is formed which becomes the fertile “frond,” Fig. 3,
and which proceeded from Fig. 6. Then a few more scales are

20 ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.—SENSITIVE FERN.

produced, and finally, at the end of the season’s growth, the
young, circinately arranged leaves which are to push out again
into barren fronds on the advent of spring.

Modern botanists have been puzzled to account for its name
sensibilis, or sensitive fern. Linnzeus simply found it in use when
he established the binomial system, and retained what he found.
Thomas Moore, an authority on ferns, says it “has no other claim
to this name beyond the fact of its rapidly withering when cut.”
Mr. Robinson in his “Ferns of Essex Co., Mass.,” has a similar
idea, only that the cutting is by frost. He has noted, as the
writer of this has, that the slightest white frost injures the fronds;
but, after all, frost has this effect on many other of our hardy ferns,
and one cannot but wonder why this one more than others should
have be en singled out as especially “sensitive” on that account.
Rafinesque, in his “ Medical Flora,” published in 1828, at page
67, says that the fronds of Oxoclea sensibilis are “sensible to a
harsh grasp,” which “coils them when plucked;” but this seems
to be rather a translation of what Linnzus wrote of it than to
be an cbservation of his own. How far coiling may have sug-
gested its generic name, Ovoclea, is not clear. The text-books tell
us it is “from ovos, a vessel, and lero, to enclose,” but no one
can exactly see the application. One tells us it is “an ancient
name of Dioscorides,” but the old Greek writer’s plant seems to
have had something in connection with the ass, and to have been
perhaps an Azchusa or some Loraginaccous plant. At any rate,
whatever may have been the original meaning or derivation of
the mame, we can only know that our plant had no relation
whatever to anything the Greeks or Romans had in their mind.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Rhizome. 2. Barren frond. 3. Fertile frond. 4. Fibrous
roots from the rhizome. 5. Bases of the barren fronds. 6, Base of the fertile frond. 7.
Abortive fronds or scales.

Sul. PLATE ©,

Ws

SARRACENIA PSI

Jus ark eer Ra

: PTAC NA

CGOhIBANY. mt

SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.

PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT.

NATURAL ORDER, SARRACENIACE/E,

SARRACENIA PSITTACINA, Michaux.—Leaves short, spreading; tube slender, broadly winged,
marked with white spots, and reticulated with purple veins; lamina globose, inflated,
incurved-beaked, almost closing the orifice of the tube; leaves two to four inches long;
scapes one foot high. (Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States. See also Wood’s
Class- Book of Botany.)

HE careful reader will notice that in Professor Wood’s
be “Class-Book” (Ed. 1861, before us) the name of this
plait i is given as S. pszticina, but this is evidently one of those

typographical errors which even the most careful editor will
sometimes overlook. Dr. Chapman has it S. Psittacina, begin-
ning the specific name with a capital; and as_ typographical
errors are rare in this work, we might conclude that it is no error
of the press, but that Dr. Chapman intended it to read this way.
There appears, however, to be no reason why it should be so;
and we have changed it in the botanical quotation made from his
work. This may seem a small matter to some, but as our work
is intended for the novices in botanical studies as well as for
those who are more accomplished, we take the occasion to
explain why capitals are sometimes used in the specific name.
Generic names are always commenced with a capital; specific
ones only when derived from proper names. Thus Sarracenia
vubra claims a capital only for the generic name; 7zéra, or red,
being a common and nota proper name, does not require it.
There are two capitals in S. Drammondit, the last word meaning
of or belonging to Mr. Drummond. Sometimes however a

name which, under some circumstances, may have been a generic
(21)

22 SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.—PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT.

one, becomes merely that of a species, in which case, though it
might have been derived originally from a common name, it fol-
lows its “proper” form. Now fscé¢acus is Latin for a parrot, and
a botanist might make a genus under a name derived from this
word. In time it might be moved to Sarracenia, when in order
to carry along its ancient history it would be called Sarracenia
Puttacina, But it does not appear that this has ever been the
case with our present plant, and therefore under the rules the
capital should be avoided.

Indeed our present species was not known to the earlier
botanists; S. flava and S. purpurea being the only two that seem
to be referred to in Clayton’s collection. Michaux, who gave it
the name of Astttacina, was nearly the first to notice it as being
particularly distinct from others, though it was supposed to be
a form of S. rubra, when taken to England by Frazer in 1786.
The earlier botanists seem to have had much difficulty in distin-
guishing it from S. 7wéra ; and Croom made a new species of one
form under the name of S. fzlchella, which is now however
referred to S. pstttacina. Croom himself was the first to identify
it. In“ Suilliman’s Journal” for 1834, he says: “Ever since I met
with the species of Sarracenia of which I gave some account in
this journal for October last, under the name of S. pzlchella, I
have felt a suspicion that it is the true original of Michaux’ S.
psittacina, which later botanists have united with S. radra of
Walter, but from which this species is very distinct, and forming
an apparently intermediate species between S. variolarts and S.
rubra, .. . As I have before remarked, the appendix of this
species resembles the head of a parrot, and it is the only spe-
cies in which the resemblance is striking. The leaves too are
shorter than those of either of those of the other species, and
therefore particularly deserving the application of the word
‘brevibus ;’ while those of S. rwdra,so far as my observation has
extended, are as long as, and even longer than S\ veszolaris.
The white spots in the leaves, which I have mentioned, may be
what Michaux meant by the term ‘coloratis,’ while their purple

SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.—PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT. 2 3

veins (which I omitted to mention) are well expressed by
venoso-reticulatis, In my former account the description which I
gave of the longitudinal wing is faulty. Instead of lanceolate, the
term semi-lanceolate would have better conveyed the idea I
intended—broad above, narrowing to a point below.” We give
this little piece of history from Croom, in order that moderns
may see what difficulties the early botanists had in searching for
the facts, and how thankful we may be that their labors have
made matters so clear and plain for us.

That the plant is variable we can well imagine after reading
what Croom and Chapman say, and comparing it with our
plate, which is a faithful copy of one growing in the Cambridge
Botanical Garden, which has not the white spots nor purple
veins. The leaves in our plate are however very young, as
this species flowers among the earliest, and while the new
growth is being made. Mr. A. P. Garber says, in the “ Botan-
ical Gazette,
in Florida, on the 16th of February.

The broad wing of the leaf in the Parrot pitcher-plant, as

”

that he has seen it nearly in flower at Pilatka,

referred to by the botanical authorities, is one of the most
striking features of this species. As will be seen by our plate
the leaf is nearly all wing, and there is scarcely a tubular portion
enough left to warrant us in calling it a pitcher at all. As our
readers know, the pitchers in Savracenza have been supposed to
be special contrivances to catch insects to aid in nourishing the
plant. Mr. Nuttall scouted this idea. He says: “The tubes
are commonly crowded with dead flies and other insects, perish-
ing in imprisonment by one of the wonderful but simple acci-
dents of nature,—a lesson for the incautious,—but no proof of
instinct or necessity in the passive Sarracenia, which could
probably well maintain its vegetation without the aid of dead
insects—a remark equally applicable to many other plants
which accidentally prove fatal to insects, such as the wonderful
Dionea, which in its native swamps as frequently catches straws
as flies, and will equally enfold anything, so subject is it in this

24 SARRACENIA PSITTACINA.—PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT.

respect to the blindness of accident.” It is not our purpose to
enter into any controversial questions in this work, but to give
enough of facts on all sides to enable the student to form judg-
ments for himself. Without therefore saying that the Pitcher-
plants are designed expressly to catch and use insects as food, we
may remark that Mr. Nuttall’s argument does not prove that
they are not, for nature evidently loves to do any one thing ina
great variety of ways. It may even be questioned whether the
pitcher-leaved Sarracenias could maintain their vegetation quite
as well without the water and insects. It is interesting to note
how little leaf surface there is to act asin other plants. Scarcely
anything is left but the pitcher's lid capable of absorbing matter
from the atmosphere. Nature indeed seems to look on the
pitcher as a substitute for leaf surface. In our present species,
which has no insect-catching pitchers worth speaking of, she
seems to have thought it necessary to compensate for this

absence in the broad green wing, which is indeed the leaf of

S
an ordinary plant in all that relates to general functional power.
Having no pitcher, it had to have leaves. Arguments of this
kind are not however what the best botanists accept. Instead
of looking exclusively to what a plant may do by evident ability
from adaptation, what it actually does do is the safer field for
investigation,
- The Parrot pitcher-plant is confined to a small strip of our

great country, between Louisiana and Florida to Georgia.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. Flowering plant with the newly pushing leaves. 2. The
broad wing. 3. Old leaf (of previous year), showing close resemblance to a parrot head.
4. Cut-off portion, showing the very narrow tube. 5. Showing the “ five-cleft, umbrella
style’? of Dr. Chapman.

LILIUM CANADENSE.

AMERICAN YELLOW LILY.

NATURAL ORDER, LILIACEA.

Litium CANADENSE, Linneeus.—Leaves three-veined, mostly verticillate, lanceolate, the veins
hairy beneath; peduncles terminal, elongated, usually by threes; flowers nodding, the
segments spreading, never revolute. Buib scaly. Stem round, two to four feet high,
surrounded by several remote whorls, each consisting of four to six leaves, and often a few
scattered ones at the base. These are two to three inches long by the half to one inch
wide. Flowers one to three, sometimes seven to twenty, pendulous, yellow, or orange-
colored, spotted with dark purple inside. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also
Gray’s Botany of the Northern United States, and Chapman’s Flora of the Southern

Tnited States.)

gO NCEELLOW. in his beautiful poem of “Flowers,”

_ 1 oO

=a] sings of

“ Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day.”

He may have had a sunflower in his mind, or it may have been
many another flower; but there are few things “in the sunlight
shining,” and flaunting their “blossoms in the eye of day” more
gorgeously than the various species of our native lilies. Indeed
the Lily is ever beautiful, is famed for its loveliness in all parts
of the world, and has been celebrated in song and story in all
ages. Its very name is contemporaneous with history, having
been used by Homer; and its literal meaning is “the most
charming of all flowers.” The ancients imagined that the red
Lily was the first to be created, and modern authors believe that
the martagon Lily is the species they referred to. The Latin
writers speak of it as “Lilium intortum;” and as the martagon
turns its petals very much back upon itself, it seems to agree

so far with their description. As is the case with most of the
(25)

L

20 LILIUM CANADENSE.—AMERICAN YELLOW LILY.

flowers which they highly esteemed, they gave to the red Lily a
miraculous origin. It is said that a very excellent young god-
dess, Sylvia, who was as fair as she was good, had but a poor
opinion of Jupiter, who paid his addresses to her. Jupiter was
not accustomed to such rebuffs, and treated the fair lady rather
roughly; but she was so shocked at such rudeness, that her nose
suddenly took to bleeding, and from a few drops which fell to
the ground the red Lily sprung. The white Lily is said to be a
later creation, and to have sprung from the milk of Juno, and,
we are sorry to say, when she was in a somewhat intoxicated
condition from imbibing too freely of nectar. Considering the
more respectable origin of the red Lily, it seems scarcely just
that most of the best Lily-poetry has been given to the white;
and that the white Lily, not satisfied with what may be fairly her
due, has taken some that belongs of right to her darker sister:
for the Lily which Solomon in all his glory could not compete
with.was much more probably of the red than the white kind.

If we are asked to
“ Bring Lilies for a maiden’s grave,”

or if, on Percival’s invitation, we go to

“a sweet green spot
Where a Lily is blooming fair,”

or, with Keats, to look at one

“who grew
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,”

or to see the
“Lady lily gently looking down,”

or in fact to imagine any poetic Lily whatever, the chance is
that we shall be called on to go where the

“Queen of the field, in a milk-white mantle drest,
The lovely Lily waved her curling crest.”

It is, however, some satisfaction to feel after all this poetic ~
slight of the old world on fair Sylvia’s devotion to womanly

LILIUM CANADENSE.— AMERICAN YELLOW LILY. 27

decorum, that the new world may fully atone for the injustice,
for of the numerous species indigenous to America, there is not
one white among them all.

Our present species, Lilia Canadense, or American yellow
Lily, we believe to be the earliest of all our native species to
flower; for though it is not so stated in our text-books, it is not
unusual to find it in bloom in the vicinity of Philadelphia the last
of May or very early in June. This season (1878) particularly
it was noted that not a single flower could be obtained on the
20th of June, all being over blown by that time. The flowers
vary very much in color from deep yellow to a rich crimson in
different plants. Much remains yet to be learned of Lilies, and
especially of this species. There is a form of it from Mississippi
which commences to flower just as the form from New Jersey goes
out of bloom, and which produces no seeds. The flowers also
are of a richer color, and more revolute than Wood's description
would imply. Further it will amply repay the student to watch
the behavior of the flowers when about to seed. When the flower
first opens it hangs on its sub-erect stem, the pistil curving but
little upwards. It makes no growth whatever for several days,
or until the petals begin to fade,—then the pistil takes an upward
curve, sometimes so much as to have its apex pointing towards
the ovary. For several days after this the ovary or pistil remains
stationary, when at length the formsr assumes a straight line
with the pedicel, and finally erect, in which position the seed
vessel matures. We thus see that growth in nature is not by
regular advances; but is by leaps, or as we say, rhythmical.

There is a great general resemblance between the species of
lilies, and it is not easy to distinguish one from another. The
yellow Lily approaches the Z. saferdum, but is generally out of
flower before that commences to open; the divisions of the peri-
anth or flower cup as a general rule do not turn back quite so
much,—but a good distinction lies in the terminal character of
the flowers in the best specimens of our species; that is, the
flowers seem to come out in a bunch or cluster at the top of the

28 LILIUM CANADENSE.—AMERICAN YELLOW LILY.

stalk as shown in our plate (Fig. 1), while in the best specimens
of L. superbum the flowers are more or less axillary as well as
terminal, though in poor specimens of the latter when there are
but two or three flowers on the stalk, they are only terminal, as
in L. Canadense.

The Lily increases by underground stems. These, very much
arrested in their development, form the bulb, as may be seen by
the great number of small scales, each of which is the represent- -
ative of a leaf. As three of these leaves would make a circle
round the stem if alternately scattered as they are on many allied
plants, we may have some idea from the number of these little
scales how long the lily stem would be if accelerated instead of
arrested as the stems or branches of ordinary plants are. As
we see in our Figs. 2 and 3, the rhizoma or underground stem
pushes out from the base of the last year’s bulb (Fig. 2), gradu-
ally thickening as it approaches the end of its season of growth.
The new bulb (Fig. 3) in the case illustrated is much larger than
its predecessor, and will make a stronger flower stem next year.

The yellow Lily is found in all portions of the United States
east of the Mississippi, and in Arkansas and Minnesota, skipping
Kansas. Some closely allied forms are also found on the Pacific
slope, but botanists are not yet agreed as to whether they are
really distinct species or forms of this one. It is usually found
in wet, open meadows, but as we go southwardly it is found only
at the higher elevations, showing that its real home centre is
towards the north.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. Top of an averaged-sized flower stem, from Massachusetts.
2. The flowering bulb. 3. New bulb for flowering the next year.

SoLANUM ToRRE——

SOLANUM TORREYI.

TORREY’'S SOLANUM.

NATURAL ORDER, SOLANACE-E.

SOLANUM TorREYI, Gray.—Cinereous with a somewhat close furfuraceous pubescence composed
of about equally nine to twelve-rayed hairs: prickles small and subuiate, scanty along the
stem and midribs, or sometimes nearly wanting: leaves ovate with truncate or slightly
cordate base, sinuately five to seven-lobed (four to six inches long); the lobes entire or
undulate, obtuse, unarmed: cymes at first terminal, loose, bifid or trifid; lobes of the
calyx (often six) short ovate with a long abrupt acumination. Corolla an inch anda
half in diameter; its lobes broadly ovate: berry globose, an inch in diameter, yellow
when mature. (Dr. Asa Gray in Synoptical Flora of North America.)

HIS beautiful species of Solanum has a very brief botan-
“yi ical history. It appears to have been met with es
Tindheimer in Texas in 1843, “around Houston, the Brazos, etc.”

and is noted in an account of his collections by Engelmann and
Gray in 1845. It was then not well understood, and referred
doubtfully to an old Linnzean species, a native of the West Indies,
named Solanum mammosum, and some comparison made be-
tween it and the Solanum Caroliniense, the well-known “ Horse-
Nettle,” so troublesome to cultivators in many parts of the Union.
that one described as S.
platyphyllum by Dr. Torrey is to be regarded as this species; the
S. platvphylum described by Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth

from South America being something else. Torrey’s name

d

Dr. Gray also notes in the “Synopsis” t

being therefore appropriated by another, according to botanical
rules the plant has to be renamed, and thus we find it now, as
given by Dr. Gray, S. Zorreyz. This is all that we find noted
of it in botanical works. Its geographical history is as brief.
Dr. Gray says it grows on “ Prairies, etc—in Kansas and Texas.”

It is not however in the catalogue of Kansas plants recently issued
(20)

30 SOLANUM TORREYI.—TORREY'S SOLANUM.

by Professor Snow, and is probably rare in that State. Indeed
from the fact that while so many collectors have been over both
the States named in different directions it does not appear in
their lists, it is probable that it is not a common species. If
this be so it is remarkable, as the plant increases from creeping
under-ground stems; or at least every portion of its roots, when
- broken, will push out and make a plant, in this respect much
resembling the “ Horse-Nettle” before referred to, and which is
so great a pest that in Delaware the writer has known cultivated
ground abandoned on account of its existence. It is well to
take particular notice of this power of growth possessed by the
roots, as from its beauty it will probably be sought for by culti-
vators, and may become very troublesome unless this character
be well known. To those who understand it little trouble need
arise from its culture, for its neighbor, the “ Horse-Nettle,” is
easily kept within bounds by a little watchfulness. A case came
under the writer’s notice where the “ Horse-Nettle” had estab-
lished itself profusely before it was observed, but on its discov-
ery a boy was set to dig the roots out carefully. Broken por-
tions left in the earth grew, and these were again taken out.
This was repeated three times during the season, and it was
believed that all were destroyed; but on closely watching, a few
plants were found the next year, and were also taken out, and
no more appeared any time afterwards. This was ona large
scale, and of course entailed great labor, but a very little care
would be sufficient to keep a single plant within bounds under
garden culture. Its beauty well deserves any little attention
that may be required in cultivating it.

Torrey’s Solanum, while it has not much history of its own to
boast of, belongs to a very celebrated genus. In numbers they
are enormous, Don, in his “Dictionary of Gardening,” pub-
lished in 1838, numbers 406 of them, without including the
Tomato-like species and others which were regarded as Solanuims
by Linnzeus. Decandolle in his “ Prodromus” gives nine hundred
and twenty species! So that a critical study of this genus is

SOLANUM TORREYI,—TORREY’S SOLANUM, 31

almost enough for one man. It is also interesting to note that
the greater part of these are natives of the American Continent.
They mostly love heat, however, and few species are found able
to endure the winter of the United States. Dr. Gray has less
than twenty species in his “Synopsis,” and some of these are
doubtfully native.

The name Solanum is a very ancient one, and no one now
seems to know to what plant it was originally applied, or why
the name was given to whatever plant it may have been. Don
says it is “a name given by Pliny, but the derivation is uncer-
tain. Some derive it from So/, the sun; others say it is Solanum,
from Sus, being serviceable in disorders of swine; and others
from So/or, to comfort, from its soothing narcotic effects: all
these conjectures are, however, improbable.” Some botanists
have adopted one, some another of these conjectures, but Dr.
Gray decides the “derivation uncertain.” It may be noted
however that the first and last suggestions given by Don are
probably the same, as So/or and So/ are evidently from the same
root. The Latin poet Virgil evidently uses the word So/ in the
application to clear soothing weather, and the transition in this
relation to our word solace is evident enough. Ainsworth in
his dictionary says positively Solanum is a@ sole, which is Latin
signifying from the Sun. All that is certainly known is that by
the name the old Greeks and Romans had in view some sooth-
ing or narcotic plant, and what were known as “ Nightshades,”
during the Middle Ages, or at least as far back as we can trace
botanical knowledge, were associated with So/anum. Tourne-
fort, about the year 1700, limited the genus as we now have it,
and Linnzus adopted the name in his “Genera Plantarum,”
Oe rae a

Associated as So/anum was with the “ Nightshades” in which
is the celebrated Atyopa Belladonna, the whole family of Solanum
was at one time looked on with suspicion. The potato and, for
the popular purpose we have now in view, the egg-plant and
tomato, all near enough to the genus to be at one time consid-

32 SOLANUM TORREYI.—TORREY’S SOLANUM.

ered by good botanists members of it, were supposed to be in
some measure poisonous. The tubers of the potato were
thought to be safe only after they were cooked; and even
within the memory of the present writer few persons thought
it quite safe to eat a raw tomato. The immense quantities of
tomatoes eaten uncooked in our time would have astonished
our forefathers. It is not however clear how far they are
poisonous. Griffith, in his “Medical Botany,” says the leaves
of the tomato will produce vomiting; and other medical writers
tell us that the “balls,” or seed-vessels of the potato, eaten have
caused certain death. But who would make the trial, for these
potato fruits are very nauseous, and have nothing to attract
even a child? The Solanunze mammosum, with which our
species was once associated, and to which it is closely allied,
is said by Ainslee to bear “a large and poisonous fruit.” We
give all this as part of the associated history, but have an
impression that our pretty flowering species, S. Zorreyz, will
not be found such a very bad fellow after all.

Of late years much attention has been given to the study of
the hairs of plants. They often exhibit a great variety in form
and structure, and as in S. Zorrey? the hairs are particularly
referred to by Dr. Gray in the description quoted from _ his
work, we have given an enlarged drawing of one which in
this case is branched, or in botanical language, stellate. There
seemed to be none “eight to twelve rayed” on our plant, as
Dr. Gray finds in his specimens. All were uniformly seven
rayed, as in our very much magnified engraving (Fig. 2), which
is given as a back view showing a small pedicel to which the
rays are attached.

For the opportunity of illustrating this rare and pretty spe-
cies we are indebted to the Cambridge Botanical Garden, where
it was growing to perfection under the care of Mr. W. Falconer,
gardener there.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. A flowering branch. 2. Stellate hair enlarged from the
under-side of a leaf.

banc” NU Al Ge spt ah cae

POLYPODIUM CALIFORNICUM.
CALIFORNIAN POLYPODY.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

POLYPODIUM CALIFORNICUM, Kaulfuss.—Fronds deeply pinnatifid; segments oblong, retuse,
sharply serrate, the inferior ones narrower towards the base, decurrent; veins oblique
parallel; veinlets dichotomous, anastomosing; sori ovate, solitary. (Kaulfuss 72 E£nu-
meratio Lilicum quas in itinere circa terram legit cl. Adelbertus de Chamisso, etc.)

S none of our popular botanical text-books contain any

4| description of this pretty fern, we have translated the
original description of the species as given by Dr. Frederick
Kaulfuss in the work above referred to. Chamisso accompa-
nied the navigator Kotzebue in his celebrated voyage ; and Kaul-
fuss, who was professor of botany in the celebrated German
University of Halle, described and remarked on the ferns his
friend collected. According to Kaulfuss, Chamisso simply gives
“California” as its location, but it is found much farther north,
as specimens from which our drawing was made were gathered
for us near the Falls of the Wilhamette by Mrs. Fanny E.
Briggs, who thus graphically descrites the spot from whence
they came: “Oregon City, one of the oldest towns in the State,
is the most picturesque in situation I have yet met with. Here
are the Falls of the Wilhamette, and a line of high rocky bluffs
rise abruptly, leaving only a narrow strip of level ground along
the river. The railroad is built on this. The town is wholly
on the bluffs, and is reached by long flights of stairs, some of the
steps set zigzag in upright frames. The town is neat and pretty,
with gardens, shade and fruit trees in abundance. The rocky
face of the bluff is covered by mosses, ferns and vines, and two or

three little silver ribbon-like mountain streams leap sparklingly
3 (33)

34 POLYPODIUM CALIFORNICUM.—CALIFORNIAN POLYPODY.

from its rocky brow.” We are very glad to be able to give a
representation of this very beautiful fern, because in pursuance of
our plan to take representatives of the Flora from every part of
the United States we want to have Oregon represented; and also
because this species offers the opportunity to say a little on the
importance of examining the veins in determining the various
kinds of ferns. The earlier botanists paid attention chiefly to
the form of the fruit dots, their position on the fronds, or their
situation on the veins; but characters derived from the veins
themselves do not appear to have attracted much attention till
a comparatively modern date. In 1836 Professor C. B. Presl,
one of two brothers both celebrated botanists of Prague, pub-
lished a work on ferns in which characters drawn from the
veins occupied a very prominent position. Those who make
ferns a special study do not seem to agree in all cases with
Professor Presl as to the precise value of such characters, but
still they are found generally to be of as much value as most
other characters in ferns, and hence all students in these times
examine the veins as closely as any other parts of a fern. Some
veins are simple, others branched, others run completely to the
margin, while others stop short. Again there are others which
continually diverge, and no matter what may be their length
never touch another after having once started from the parent
vein; while there are others which seem to run backwards and
forwards, connecting one with another, and forming a complete
net-work all over the surface. In some cases these characters
are constant, that is to say, are generally found the same in all
the specimens of the, species we may find, and then they form
what botanists call a valuable character; but in other cases they
are found to vary, sometimes having perhaps free veins, that is
never being connected at their points, and at others they forma
net-work, or as it is technically said, they anastomose.

Our present species is just one of these uncertain cases. It
will be noted that the description translated from Kaulfuss says
“veinlets anastomosing,” but these will not be found in that

POLYPODIUM CALIFORNICUM.—CALIFORNIAN POCLYPODY. 35

condition on our plate. The reason is that about the time when
our species was first discovered the condition of the veins was
supposed to be more unchangeable than it is known to be now.
In some places a form was found like it that did not have the
netted veins, and it was thought therefore to be another species,
and named by Hooker and Arnott Polyfodtum intermedium ; but
as more specimens were discovered some of the former would
occasionally be found with free veins and some of the latter
with netted veins, and therefore in this case at least the character
is worth nothing as a distinction. Consequently Hooker, in his
“Species Filicum” published in 1864, united the two, and they are
now both known by the oldest name P. Californicum. Our plant
in its earlier history would have been probably known as
FP. intermediun.

Whether a form is to be considered as a distinct species or
as a mere variety depends very much on experience as to the
fixity of characters, rather than on any specific points that can be
readily explained; and we can see in this case that only for the
fact that a few netted veins had been found in one case, and a
few free veins in another case, both forms would in all probability
be regarded as distinct species to this day; and it is such facts
as these which make observations on the range of variation in
species of so much value to practical botanists. In ferns espe-
cially very much has to be learned on this point. For want of
this knowledge synonyms are very numerous. In the case of
our present species, Professor Kunze, in a paper translated in
« Silliman’s Journal,” new series, Vol. 6th, remarks that Hooker
and Greville, standard authors on ferns, had united very differ-
ent species with it. Another writer in the 6th Volume of the
“Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club” suggests a doubt
whether another species of the Pacific Coast, Polypodium falca-
tum, may not be referred to P. Calfornicum. Botanists may not
be wholly prepared for this view yet, although we incline to it;
but it shows how uncertain much fern knowledge yet remains,

A very pretty feature in our Californian Polypody is its trans-

36 POLYPODIUM CALIFORNICUM.—CALIFORNIAN POLYPODY.

parent veins as seen when held up to the light. These veins
are club-shaped, or thickened upwards at the termination, a
point that does not seem to have attracted the attention of
describers, though as to the mere frond differences in the
opacity of the various forms have been commented on.

Kaulfuss in the work from which we have translated the
description says it is “similar to Polypodium vulgare,” which is
our common Eastern form. But this is from the botanist’s stand-
point. The popular vote will be that it is much handsomer, by
its more slender lobes and generally graceful fronds.

If we, as it seems we must, combine P. zxéermedium with
P.. Californicum, it gives a wide geographical range to it on the
Pacific Coast from the Columbia River southwards.

EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.—1I. An average sized plant. 2. An enlarged portion of a
division of the frond showing the veinlets and the sori thereon.

Vor. Ul ATE. 9.

ifs

ve

SARRACENIA RUBRA.

L. Prana &« Company, Bosto

Gabe
os . :

SARRACENIA RUBRA.
RED-FLOWERED TRUMPET LEAF.—Watrer’s SARRACENIA.

NATURAL ORDER, SARRACENIACE.

SARRACENIA RUBRA, Walter.—Leaves elongated, erect, slender, narrowly winged, paler above,
and reticulated with purple veins; lamina ovate, erect, beak-pointed, tomentose within;
flowers reddish purple. Leaves ten to eighteen inches long, shorter than the scapes.
(Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States. See also Wood's Class- Book of Botany,
under S. Gronovi?.)

HIS species of the “Side-saddle flower” well illustrates a

Z4A/ point often made, that names may be misleading, and
fist names which have no particular meaning so far as the appli-
cation to any character in the plant is concerned, are at least as
good as any. This particular species was named by Thomas
Walter, who published a history of the plants of the Carolinas in
1788. As Sarracenia rubra, it is the red-flowered Sarracenia,
naturally enough from Walter's name; but there are other Sar-
racenias as “red” as this, and the collector of wild flowers must
therefore remember when he reads of the “Red Sarracenia,” that
it is merely “its name.” Still, as it is just as well to avoid mis-
leading names, we propose to those who may wish a better name
than the only one so far known for it, that it be called ‘Walter's
Sarracenia.”

The Sarracenias are so unlike most other plants, that the
student is particularly interested in how they are made, and the
especial reasons for their peculiar structure. While, as Percival
says, generally

“Tn flowers
The serpent hides his venom, and the sting
Of the dread insect lurks in fairest bowers,”

the case is reversed here. There is no lurking of dread insects
(37)

38 SARRACENIA RUBRA.—RED-FLOWERED TRUMPET LEAF.

about these flowers. It is the plant which acts like the “veno-
mous serpent,” and entices the “lurking insect” to its sure
destruction. How they work to this end is very curious. In
“Silliman’s Journal” for 1873, Professor Gray quotes from the
English translation of Maout and Decaisnes’ “System of Botany:”
“The pitcher-shaped leaves are effective insect traps; a sugary
secretion exudes at the mouth of the pitchers and attracts insects,
which descend lower in the tube, where they meet with a belt of
reflexed hairs, which facilitate their descent into a watery fluid
that fills the bottom of the cavity, and at the same time prevents
their egress.” This is given as of our present plant, S. zadra,
but as Canada is mentioned, Dr. Gray thinks it must have had
reference to S. pupurca, which is the only one found in Canada.
Dr. Gray says he wishes “to call attention to the statement that
Sarracenia produces a sugary excretion which attracts flies to
their ruin, this being the first time, so far as I know, that any such
statement has app:ared in print.” However, it appears in
print in American publications long before this. In Darby's
“Botany of the Southern States,” written in 1855, we read at
page 219: “This genus affords a striking example of a great
modification of the petiole, since there is no doubt the tube part
is the petiole, and what we call the lamina, the true lamina of the
leaf. These tubes are generally filled with water, which is sup-
posed to be secreted by the plart, and this always contains dead
insects. The tube could not have been formed in a better man-
ner to accomplish a given end than this is to catch insects. The
saccharine secretion which surrounds the orifice decoys insects
to the tube, and the water entices them in. There are hairs
pointing downwards so as to permit an easy descent, but makes
the egress difficult.” As before noted, it is not certain that our
present species, the red or Walter’s Sarracenia, has this power
of excreting honeyed matter; so we give what ts said of it in full,
that collectors may be on the lookout to verify the statement for
themselves,

As for the fact that the pitcher is the petiole, and that it has

SARRACENIA RUBRA.—RED-FLOWERED TKUMPET LEAF, 39

been produced in this form for the purpose of insect-catching, it
may be well to note that in Willdenow’s * Species Plantarum” this
singular passage occurs: “Sic metamorphosis folii Nymph in
folium Sarraceniz, ut ipsa aquam pluvialem excipiens et retinens
extra aquas crescat; mira nature providentia;” which may be
translated: “Such is the metamorphis of the leaf of the Nymphza
into that of the Sarracenia, in order that, by receiving and retain-
ing rain water, it may, by a wonderful provision of nature, grow
where there is no water.” The sentence is very remarkable as
showing that the early fathers of modern botany had anticipated
the celebrated men of our time in conceiving the theory of evo-
lution.

As to the idea that these pitchers are modified petioles, and
that the leaf blade is something else, it is highly probable that
all petioles are modified leaf blades, and that the distinction
between the two is of practical value only as a help in descrip-
tion and classification. It is likely that the primordial plan is
that of a lobed leaf, such as we might find in the Lirzodendron,
or “tulip tree,’ and that the lower lobes became united at their
edges, leaving the upper, now forming the lid, free—and that the
petioles of many plants may be formed in the same manner.
However, as regards the Sarracenia, the manner in which the
“wing” is developed in S. pszdlacina, leaving the “ pitcher” little
more than a mid-rib, is very suggestive. But this is much better
seen by a singular genus of this same order, Sarraceniacee, found
in Guayana by Sir R. Schomberg, called Heliamphora nutans, in
which the primordial leaf was evidently three-lobed, and from the
orifice is so slit down on one side that we should as soon think
of dividing the spathe of an arum into petiole and leaf-blade as
this. We can easily see from the //eanephora that we may more
correctly say the pitcher of the Sarracenia is a folded leaf than
an inflated petiole.

Among the interesting facts brought out within recent years
is that of the different species of Sarracenia intercrossing freely
together. Mr. David Moore, of the Glasnevin Botanic Gardens

40 SARRACENIA RUBRA,—RED-FLOWERED TRUMPET LEAF.

in Ireland, has recently exhibited before the Royal Dublin Soci-
ety, an eminently scientific body, some beautiful hybrids between
our present species, S. rubra, and S. flava. In this case the
hybrid resulted in forms intermediate between the two species.
At one time it was thought not easy to cultivate these curious
plants, but the skill of modern gardeners is not only equal to the
task, but as we see, is able to raise them up from the seed to
full maturity, even to the production of new forms. In regard
to these new varieties, it may, however, be noted that the species
are very variable even in wild nature. This variation induced
Prof. Wood to group together this and several others usually
regarded as good species under the name of S. Gronovit in his
“Class-Book of Botany.”

For the opportunity to draw our plant, we are indebted to
Prof. C. S. Sargent, of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, Mass.

a

|

—

IMPATIENS ?ULVA

RAt * COMPANY, SOSTON

PLATE 10.

IMPATIENS FULVA.

SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT, OR SNAP-WEED.

NATURAL ORDER, BALSAMINACEE.

IMPATIENS FULVA, Nuttall.—Leaves rhombic-ovate, obtusish, coarsely and obtusely serrate,
teeth mucronate; pedicel two to four-flowered, short; lower gibbous sepal, acutely conical,
longer than broad, with an elongated, closely reflexed spur; flowers deep orange, macu-
late with many brown spots. Stem one and a half to three feet high. Leaves one to
three inches long, one half as wide, having a few filiform teeth at the base. Flowers
about one inch in length, the recurved spur of the lower sepals half inch long. Capsule
oblong-cylindric one inch long, bursting at the slightest touch when mature, and scatter-
ing the seed. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany
of the Northern United States; and Chapman’s Botany of the Southern United States.)

WHIS extremely interesting plant is well known to the
ell lovers of wild flowers, for it has so many points of
attraction, that there are few who have not more or less observed
it. ‘The flowers themselves are so peculiar in their form, and so
rich in color, as to have earned for the plant the common name
of “ Jewel weed;” while the remarkable sensitiveness of the seed
vessels to the touch, as referred to in the description quoted from
Professor Wood, has obtained for the plant the name of “Touch-
me-not,” a name which is applied to this and other allied species
by all the nations of Europe. The suddenness with which the
seed vessel falls to pieces when it is grasped in one’s hand, no
matter how lightly, is surprising to one who experiences it for
the first time. When Burns wrote

“ But pleasures are like poppies spread ;
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed,”

he unconsciously characterized also the behavior of these seed
vessels which leave us so little where we expected so much!
Dr. Prior says the name, “Touch-me-not,” is “a phrase that was

(41)

42 IMPATIENS FULVA.—SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT, OR SNAP-WEED.

familiar from the ‘noli-me-tangere’ pictures in Roman Catholic
countries.” The old European species is called /izpateens nolr-
tangerc, and the earlier botanists of our country supposed they
found the same species here, but it was finally discovered to be
distinct from the European one. The botanical name of the
genus, /wpatens, meaning impatient, is also derived from the
peculiar behavior of the seed vessel when touched. The name
Lmpatens is credited in modern works to Linnzus, who simply
adopted it, as he tells us in the “Genera Plantarum,” from
Rivinus, a writer of about 1690; and we find the same name in
use by Deedens, a botanical author who flourished about the
same time. Plukenet, Ray, and others of that period not only
refer to /izpatiens, but are believed to have had our kind in
view. The present species was included in the early collections
of Clayton in Virginia and of Colden from New York, as we
learn from the writings of Gronovius. It may appear singular
to some that so old and evidently well-known a plant should
bear so modern a name as one dating from only 1818, Nuttall
having then named it Z /u/va. Of this Nuttall says: “This is
the /. dzflora of Willdenow, and of Pursh in his ‘ Flora,’ and also
the Z. maculata of Muhlenberg’s ‘Catalogue.’ As several species
are spotted I have not adopted the last name; and | have
changed the former because it was deceptive.” It may be
observed about this that if names were to be changed in these
days for such reasons as these, our list of synonyms would be
hugely increased. Polygonatum biflorum may have but one
flower from each axil, and again it is found with four; but no one
seeks to change the name “because it is deceptive.” It is
remarkable, however, that Nuttall’s name with no better reason
has displaced the prior names in all American botanical works
of the present time; even Mr. Sereno Watson, usually so scru-
pulously impartial in the application of the laws of priority, uses
Nuttall’s name as the proper one in his recent “ Bibliography.”
Our work being to give a history of Botany as we find it, we, of
course, have had to use the name in our quotation from Profes-

sor Wood's Class-Book.

IMPATIENS FULVA,

SPOTTED TCUCH-ME-NOT, OR SNAP-WEED. 43

The genus has been the victim of uncertainties in some of its
relationships, and the species have fared no better. Linnzus,
who arranged plants on his sexual system, classed /wpatiens as a
syngenesious plant! In this class were also included what we
now call composites. Nuttall, who also arranged his plants on
the sexual system, places it in the class Pentandria. Nor has it
been more settled under the natural system of more modern
botanists. Wood, from whom we quote, gives it to the order
Balsaminacee. But many modern botanists do not regard this
as an independent order, and the student from this point of view
would have to search for our plant among the Geranzacce.

A peculiar feature of this and allied species of /mpatiens is
that the later flowers are often cleistogenous; that is to say,
while the earlier flowers have petals and are complete in all their
parts, as in our plate, the later ones have no petals, or anything
that would be popularly called a flower, and yield barely pollen
enough to fertilize the ovary and produce seed. Fertilization
is effected before the bud opens, and the first knowledge ‘the
observer has of the existence of any flowering operation is by
the growing seed vessel pushing from the bud. In England,
where close observations on this species have been made by Mr.
A. W. Bennet, these cleistogenenic flowers have been found in
the proportion of twenty to one of the petal bearing, or as they
are called; “perfect” ones. In the vicinity of the writer’s home
the proportion is generally about one-half. In Europe the per-
fect flowers seem rarely to produce seeds. But here they bear
freely, and plants may be seen covered with seed vessels before
any cleistogene flowers appear. The subject is one of great
interest, and will prove an inviting field for the student fond of
original research.

There are many facts worth noting in the life-history of the
Impatiens fulva. In the “ Bulletin of the Torrey Bot. Club” for
1872, it is noted that the inhabitants of Green county, New York,
call it “ Silver leaf”’ because when placed under water the leaf
glistens like silver, and does not get wet. In the volume for

44 IMPATIENS FULVA.—SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT, OR SNAP-WEED,

1877 of the same serial Mr. W. W. Bailey, of Providence, R. I,
remarks on a friénd of his finding “the sacs all perforated by
bumble-bees,” and adds: “You may remember that Dr. Gray
says this is only likely to happen in a profusely flowering species.”
Another writer somewhere, but the exact reference not at hand,
remarks that it has been reported that the leaves hang down at
nightfall, and become horizontal soon after daylight—a statement
the writer of this has confirmed by actual observation. Many
of these behaviors are by no means confined to the /izpatiens
fulva, but they all afford interesting observations to the curious
student.

Besides its value in connection with its scientific lessons, it has
a directly practical use to man, for Mr. Nuttall, on the authority
of Dr. Barton, says it is sometimes used for dyeing salmon color;
and it is said by others to be useful when applied to portions of
the skin poisoned by the common poison vine, Rhus loxtcoden-
adroi.

In its geographical range it is confined on the Atlantic slope
of our country to that portion east of the Mississippi and Mis-
souri, except to a small tract within Arkansas, growing chiefly in
low or damp places. According to Torrey and Gray it is also
found on the north-western portion of the Pacific slope.

Dr. Darlington gives as the prevailing common names
“Tawny Impatiens” and “Spotted Snap-weed;” the last being
more easily understood by people who are not botanists, we have
proposed for adoption.

Vor TL.

Ab. LES. dL te

IRIS VERNA

L.. PRaNG & Company, Boston.

Li.

IRIS VERNA.

SPRING IRIS.

NATURAL ORDER, IRIDACEAE.

IRIs VERNA, Linnzus.—Leaves linear-ensiform, rigid, rather longer than the low, one-flowered
scape; tube of the perianth filiform (two inches long), about equalling the length of the
segments; sepals and petals nearly equal, oblong-obovate, obtuse, neither crested nor
bearded, stigma deeply bifid. Stem or scape three to five inches high, sheathed with
colored bracts. Flowers pale blue, the sepals with an oblong, or orange yellow, spotted
stripe. (Wood’s Class- Book of Botany. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern
United States.)

1S one proceeds to write a popular chapter on an /7vs, the
|] many poetical and historical associations connected
with it crowd on the mind. Mythological accounts of its origin
in connection with Juno’s fair messenger are numerous, and as

no two accounts exactly agree, a collection of the various ver-
sions would form a very pretty chapter in imaginative floral
literature.

Louisa Ann Twamley has a pretty story about the naming of
the Iris at one of the courts held by Flora,—._

“All with their pearls so fair
The gay flowers wreathed were,
But, midst them all,
Crowned at the rainbow festival,
A sapphire-colored blossom shone
The loveliest there; no other one
Her jewels wore
So gracefully. Her robe all o’er
Was radiant, yet deep blue, like twilight sky,
And softly shaded, as when clouds do lie
Upon the deep expanse. ’Twas strange, none knew
A name for this fair form, so bright and blue:
But sister-flowerets fancifully said,
As they to note her beauty had been led
By its enhancement in the rainbow shower,
They e’en would call her Iris from that hour.”

(45)

46 IRIS VERNA.—SPRING IRIS,

The word iris, as is well known, is Greek for rainbow, but the
etymology of the word goes beyond this, acquainting us with the
reason why the rainbow is so called; it seems to have been
derived from zo, to foretell, the rainbow in old times having
been supposed to be the heavenly messenger foretelling rain
instead of, as now recognized, the actual consequence of the
shower.

The /ris verna is one of the earliest of spring flowers in the
Southern States, being often in bloom in March among the
forest leaves and before the green grass has hardly begun to
grow. As Park Benjamin says of the Trailing Arbutus,—

“Thou comest when spring her coronal weaves,
And thou hidest thyself mid dead strewn leaves;
Where the young grass lifts its tender blade,
Thy home and thy resting place is made;

And in the spot of thy lowly birth,

”

Unseen, thou bloomest,

Mrs. Sara J. Hale, in her “Flora’s Interpreter,” explains to
the reader that the Trailing Arbutus is “a sort of a strawberry
vine, found in New England in March, the earliest of all spring
flowers.” When such a monstrous suggestion can pass through
the current of literature unchallenged, we shall surely be par-
doned for using the poet's lines so appropriately here.

Our plate shows the arrangement by which the plant is able
to flower so early. Most Irises have to give as much growth to
the flowering shoot as to the leaves on the barren shoots.
Indeed in many cases the flower scape exceeds the leaves in
length. In this species the increase of the plant is by under-
ground runners which form leaf buds at various distances along
their length. These buds make leaves at once, and form other
buds at the base which do not develop till the following spring.
These basal buds which are to flower push up immediately when
the warm spring weather comes, and bloom as soon as they reach
the surface, forming only a few diminutive leaves along the
stems. Our Fig. 1 represents this. At Fig. 2 we have the

IRIS VERNA.—SPRING IRIS. 47

terminal growth of the underground runner for the season.
This also has buds at the base, but shows no disposition to
flower, and from this we may infer that the buds which do
flower are considerably developed before winter sets in, and this
too may be in favor of its early blossoming. Much may remain
to be learned about its habits. The opportunity to study its
behavior in a state of nature has not been favorable, as it
inhabits woods in the South within a somewhat limited region,
and away from thickly settled places. Professor Wood says
only “ Hilly woods in the interior of the Southern States;” and
Dr. Chapman says, “ Pine barrens of the middle districts, mostly
in dry soil, Alabama to North Carolina.” It may perhaps be
found more extended than this when the local botany of the
Southern States shall be more fully known. The editor of the
“Botanical Gazette” notices in the first volume of that serial
that he found it on the “knobs of Southern Indiana ;” and Dr.
Gray admits it into his “Manual of Botany of the Northern
United States” as being found in Virginia and Kentucky.

Though confined to such a comparatively limited district, it
seems to have early attracted the attention of botanists in our
country. Gronovius in his “Flora Virginica,” ed. of 1762,
notices it as having been known to David Bannister, who
collected much earlier in the century. It was also in the collec-
tion which Clayton sent to him. It seems to have been known
in England as a cultivated plant so early as 1748.

The peculiar running roots, not common at least in /77s, were
noticed by these early botanists. In those days the binomial
system, or that which restricted the names to two, that of genera
and species, had not been adopted, and Gronovius refers to this
as the Iris which has “a fibrous root, one flowered stalk, shorter
than the leaves, and with a beardless corolla.’ To Linnaeus we
are indebted for the short specific name verva in place of the
long string of descriptives as given above.

The Irises of the old world have been very much improved
by natural selection and inter-crossing, and of some of the kinds

48 IRIS VERNA.—SPRING IRIS.

a large number of varieties have been obtained of much
superior beauty to the originals. Floriculture has not yet had
the same devoted skill and attention bestowed on it in the New
World, and hence many of our beautiful plants are awaiting
some energetic florist’s care to rival in beauty and variety some
of the famous race of florists’ flowers of Europe. Our spring
Iris offers great inducements for such nice work as this, and if
once improved would no doubt not only be popular as a spring
flower, but there would be the addition of the fragrance which it
possesses, for most of the popular races of improved Irises of the
gardens are wanting in this great attraction. There is no doubt
it would readily change under the hands of the florists, as there
seem to be variations in nature. Gronovius, already quoted,
speaks of Clayton having found one with pure white flowers ;
and Peter Collinson, in a letter to John Bartram, dated March
4th, 1764, refers to his “true correspondent, Mrs. Logan,”
sending him “what she calls a white Iris from Georgia,” but
whether certainly of this species we cannot tell.

Gronovius says the vernal Iris was reputed to have medicinal
qualities, and Dr. Peyre Porcher seems to confirm this by
remarking that “it is said to possess properties similar to those
of the L. versicolor.’ The chief of these properties may be
given in the language of Bartram that “the root is considered
by the Indians a very powerful cathartic, and it is found in
artificial ponds made for the purpose near their villages.”

For the plant from which our drawing was made we are
indebted to Prof. Sargent, of the Cambridge Botanical Garden.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Leaf growth of last year with flower bud the following
spring arising from its base. 2, Terminal growth of the previous year,

Pr aie TZ.

ibe

Vo

WOODSIA OBTUSA.

PRANG & ComMPANY, BOSTON.

f
Vs

WOODSIA OBTUSA.

COMMON WOODSIA.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

Woopsia optusa, Torrey.—Frond sub-pinnate, or nearly tri-pinnate. Minutely glandular-
pilous; leaflets distant; segments of the leaflets pinnatifid; ultimate segments roundish-
oblong, obtuse, bi-dentate; sori round, one at each cleft between the leaflets, at length
crowded; stipe somewhat chaffy. Fronds lance-oblong in outline, three times as long
as wide. Segments of the leaflets crevate-serrate, the lower ones distinct, upper con-
fluent. Sori orbicular, becoming nearly confluent, each at first enclosed in the silvery
indusium which when open is notched into little teeth on the margin. (Wood’s Class-
Book of Botany. See also Gray’s Flora of the Northern United States, Chapman's
flora of the Southern United States, and Williamson’s Servs of Kentucky.)

GAGLONG the Wissahickon Creek, in Fairmount Park, Phila-
ea delphia, and from whence the plant was taken which
served us for an illustration, this fern is not uncommon, and
it is remarkable that it is almost always to be found on dry walls
—that is to say, wails built of stone without mortar—when these
walls are ina damp or shady place. The little ledges formed by
the stones, and the little spaces between the stones in the wall,
are favorite situations with this fern, as also are those parts of
the stone breastworks of dams over which the water does not
actually flow. Occasionally it is found in the crevices of rocks,
but the collector will be much more likely to meet with it in this
Park by going to the nearest old wall than to any other place.

It is a very interesting fern, though in all that constitutes
beauty, there are others superior to it. One of its happiest
phases is towards the fall of the year, when the short barren
fronds which form the outer circle bend downwards, forming a
sort of rosette, in the centre of which the fertile fronds some-
what erectly stand. In the part of our country where our illus-

4 (49)

50 WOODSIA OBTUSA.—COMMON WOODSIA.

tration grew, these barren fronds keep tolerably green till the
new ones come in spring, when they give way soon after the
appearance of the fertile fronds, and, later in the season, another
set of barren fronds appear. Our specimen was taken about
the end of May, and from this time to the end of October the
student may find along the Wissahickon excellent specimens for
study. In other parts of the country the plant does not seem to
be so highly favored. Mr. Williamson says, in his “Ferns of
Kentucky,” “that in that State it grows in exposed situations,
being better able to endure the direct rays of the sun than most
ferns. But in such places the pinnze are often very much
contracted, so that they seem to be crisp, and apparently rolled
up.” In Indiana also, according to a correspondent of the first
volume of the “ Botanical Gazette,’ who writes from Hanover, it
dies away early in the season. He says: “Early in July, while
rambling among some of the limestone cliff rocks of the Ohio
River, we secured our first specimens of Asplendum Rita-mura-
za, in beautiful fruit; and since then we have visited the same
region every month in order to confirm our observations as to its
being an evergreen, and we are now fully convinced of the accu-
racy of our former remarks on this point. Associated with this
species and fruiting abundantly at the same time, we found quite
a growth of Iloodsta ob/usa, but by the end of August it had
entirely withered away. Its fruiting season begins here proba-
bly early in June.” Other botanists seem to have very much lim-
ited the time when it may be found in fruit. Dr. Darlington in
his “Flora Cestrica”’ gives merely “ July ;” as also does Professor
Asa Gray and Professor Wood, from whom our botanical
description is taken. They are probably referring to the time of
the fruit’s first appearance; but for the benefit of those who are
making collections it is well to note how long it endures.

Its botanical history has been varied. The knowledge of the
true character of ferns is of comparatively modern date. In the
time of Linnzus all the known North American ferns would be
referred to a very few genera, possibly only to Osmunda, Plerts,

WOODSIA OBTUSA.—COMMON WOODSIA. SI

Adiantum, Asplenium and FPolypodium. Our plant seems to
have been known to Sprengel, a voluminous author of the first
quarter of our century, who probably received his specimen
from his Pennsylvania correspondent, Muhlenberg, and it is
referred to by other writers about that period as Polypodium
obtusum. Swartz, a well-known botanical authority, especially
on ferns, is usually quoted by moderns for the name, but
we refer to Sprengel in connection with it as the proper
authority. As ferns became better understood it was conceded
not to be a Polypodium, and it was placed as an Asfprdium, a
genus established by Swartz, under which name it is recorded by
Muhlenberg in his catalogue issued in 1813. The genus IT0d-
sia had been established by R. Brown before this, and Polypo-
dium Lvensts and others placed therein; and it was not until its
true relations were established by Dr. Torrey, that the name it
is now known by—/To0dsva obtusa—came into general use.

The name //oodsia is due to Robert Brown, who by it com-
memorated his friend Joseph Wood, an English botanist who in
the earlier part of the present century attained considerable
celebrity by a monograph of Roses, and who continued to be a
valuable contributor to botanical science up to the time of his
death in 1864. The name odéusum is obvious, but why given to
our species is not so clear. Many of the species with which it
was then associated in its early history had pinnules which ter-
minated sharply, and some one of this character nearly allied to
it might have suggested a comparison with this species which
had them move obtuse. At any rate the comparison which we

_have now to make with its present family relations, is unfavora-
ble to its name, as some of its sister species have blunter leaves.
However it might have passed as an “obtuse-leaved Lolyfo-
dium,” it is misleading to call it “obtuse-leaved MWoodsia,” as is
often the case in botanical works. It is an illustration of the
trouble that arises from the use of specific names which mean
something, and is a good point for those who regcrd personal
names as much more satisfactory. Its old name of “Rock Poly

52 WOODSIA OBTUSA.—COMMON WOODSIA.

pody” is also objectionable, though still much in use. As we
are left without any acceptable popular name, we would suggest
“Common Woodsia,” as it is perhaps the best known of all the
American species of the genus.

It is widely distributed over the Eastern portion of the United
States. Mr. Redfield includes it in his Appalachian group,
which comprises those species found in the mountain and hilly
regions of the United States east of the Mississippi.

Dr. Gray in his “ Manual” locates it on “Rocky banks and
cliffs especially northward;”? Chapman gives “ Rocks along the
Allegheny Mountains and northwards;” and Wood refers it to
“among and on rocks, New York, to Kentucky and Tennessee.”
It is possible it may be a little beyond the strict line of the Mis-
sissippi, of which botanically the Missouri forms a part, for Mr.
James Wilson reports it from Leavenworth, Kansas, and Pro-
fessor Lesquereux regards it, though with some doubt, as indig-
enous to Arkansas. Mr. Howard Shriver notes it as abundant
in Pulaski county, Vu ginia.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. Medium-sized specimen from Pennsylvania, taken in June.
2. Enlarged pinna in fruit.

Vou Ill

PE ACELIA BIPINNAT FIDA

PRENG Gsriran BOSTON

Piatt

N

PVLACELIA BIPINN IATIFIDA.
BIPIN NATE PHACIOUIA.

NATURAL ORDER, HYDROPHYLLACE.®.

fichaux.—A feet or more high from a slender biennial root,

PHACELIA BIFTS

erect,

NATIPIDA,
lately branched,

ioopubesceat ami above mostly viscku and glandular:

iibin, pinnately three tn seven-civided; the ‘livisions

ider-petled. cree
: > the lower

sely ond ireepularly incised or pinaatifis

feonfluent: racemcs loose, seven tu twenty flowered :

“pede! spre fruii recurved: valyx- ies linear, loose, longer than the

globular capsule : Comite rotste-campanulate, viclet-blue, over Ye if on iach in diameter,

with rather short rounded Jobes and very conspicuous internal eae stamens
(bearded) and sty;!s usually more or less exserted, . (Gray's Sysoptica’ as of Meorh
America. See also Gray’s Manwal of the Botany of the Northern Cniics cag Chey
man’s Flora of the Southern Caled Sieter; and Nood’s Chage £00k of Bottny.5

IN Dr.. Gray’s recent “Syuoptical Flora of North

America,” fom which we have taken our botanical

erheleits are described; and yet less than

oe
3

a huvdred years age not one was known, The first know!-

edge of them seems. te have been gained from Commerson's

celebrated voyage, when one which we now know as Péucedia
cwvemmata was found in the Straits of Magellan. lewas at tha:
time thought to be a Helictrope, and eee Vahl a Danish
botanist, and one of the most celebrated of that time, named i
fletiotraprum pianatum, under which it is to be searchec: for i
the earier writings of Willdenow and of some others. But
| te well-known botanist of the end of the last centu ry,

“Genera Plantarum” published in 1789, made a new
i, seeefia, which name’ it still bears. That particular

Huwers erowing in dense bunches or fascicies,.
ed ihe “name, fhaketas being Greek for a
4 species is very remarkable

fens

PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA.

BIPINNATE PHACELIA.

NATURAL ORDER, HYDROPHYLLACE®.

PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA, Michaux.—A foot or more high from a slender biennial root,
erect, paniculately branched, hirsute-pubescent and above mostly viscid and glandular:
leaves slender-petioled, green and thin, pinnately three to seven-divided; the divisions
ovate or oblong-ovate, acute, coarsely and irregularly incised or pinnatifid; the lower
short-petiolulate and the uppermost confluent: racemes loose, seven to twenty-flowered:
pedicels spreading or in fruit recurved: calyx-lobes linear, loose, longer than the
globular capsule: corolla rotate-campanulate, violet-blue, over half an iach in diameter,
with rather short rounded lobes and very conspicuous internal appendages: stamens
(bearded) and style usually more or less exserted. (Gray’s Synoptica’ Flora of North
America. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States ; Chap-
man’s Flora of the Southern United States ; and Wood's Class-Book of Botany.)

IN Dr. Gray's recent “Synoptical Flora of North
i America,” from which we have taken our botanical
description, fifty-five Phaceleas are described; and yet less than
a hundred years ago not one was known. The first knowl-
edge of them seems to have been gained from Commerson’s
celebrated voyage, when one which we now know as Phacelia
circinata was found in the Straits of Magellan. It was at that
time thought to be a Heliotrope, and Martin Vahl, a Danish
botanist, and one of the most celebrated of that time, named it
fFlehiotropium pinnatum, under which it is to be searched for in
the earlier writings of Willdenow and of some others. But
Jussieu, the well-known botanist of the end of the last century,
in his “Genera Plantarum” published in 1789, made a new
genus of it, Phacelia, which name it still bears. That particular
species has the flowers growing in dense bunches or fascicles,
and this suggested the name, pfhakclos being Greek for a

fasicuius or bunch. This original species is very remarkable
(53)

54 PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA.—BIPINNATE PHACELIA.

for its great geographical range, being, as “the Botany of the
Geological Survey of California” tells us, “common to the two
Continents and ranges almost throughout their length,” meaning
the Northern and Southern portions of this one Continent, for
the genus is wholly confined to the Western Hemisphere,—and
indeed nearly the whole of them are natives of the United
States.

The history of these Phacelias affords a lesson in the laws of
nomenclature which it may be well to explain to the student as
we pass along. Though we adopt the name first given by the
botanist who describes the plant, the description which he gives
with his name is not always accepted without modification. For
instance Phacelia described by Jussieu requires the plants com-
” while the
genus as now described in the Botany of California has the
corolla from “almost rotate to narrow funnel form.” Then the
stamens according to Jussieu must be “exserted and styles
short” to constitute a Phacelia, while Dr. Gray in the “ Sy-

prising the genus to have corollas “ sub-campanulate ;

nopsis” makes no generic reference to the stamens or pistils,—
indeed some Phacelias, as we now understand them, have not
exserted stamens, and as we may see in our plate, have styles
that are certainly not short. In fact if a student were to read
carefully the description of the genus as given by Jussieu, and
then that by Brewer, Watson, or Dr. Gray, he could scarcely
believe that the same plants were intended by the same name.
Again we may have a lesson respecting the specific names.
The author's name, which we attach to the name of a plant, does
not imply that that author was the first who described the
species, and who first made it known,—but that he was the
person who applied that particular name to the plant. For
instance, there is a plant which was known as £utoca sericea
of Graham, and Curtis’ “ Botanical Magazine.” But Professor
Gray does not recognize Zufoca as sufficiently distinct to form a
separate genus from Phacelia, so he renames it, and it stands as
Phacelia sericea of Gray. In this way Graham loses all credit,

PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA.—BIPINNATE PHACELIA. 55

and there is nothing whatever to associate his name with the
history of the plant, unless some botanical antiquary digs it out
from the mass of synonyms under which so much lies buried.
It does not seem fair, but it is the law of botany, and indeed it is
one of those necessities which must be submitted to. Several
supposed genera, as for instance Cosmanthus, Whidlavia and
fiutoca, which once had severally many species under their
names, are all now regarded by Dr. Gray as sections of Phacelia,
and this is why the genus seems to have grown so large as it is
at the present time.

Our pretty species, Phacclia bipinnatifida, has little to boast of
in the way of popular history; but it will commend itself to all
lovers of wild flowers by its simple beauty. It does not appear
to have been noticed by the older botanists; Michaux in_ his
“Flora of North America,” in 1803, being the first to name and
describe it, probably from Kentucky specimens, It is subject to
some variations, one of sufficient character to have been regarded
as a distinct species. This is Lhacelia brevistylis of Buckley,
though now only a variety of Gray, while still retaining its
original specific name. This particular variety was found in
Alabama by Professor S. B. Buckley, now the State Geologist
of Texas. In its geographical relations it is found according to
Professor Gray, in his “Synopsis,” “in the shaded banks of
streams, from Ohio and Illinois to Alabama.” It does not seem
to extend to the lower lands near the coast, and is probably
not usually met with by collectors along what might be properly
called the seaboard States. Darby, in his “Botany of the
Southern States,” does not include it even in so late an edition
as 1866. Dr. Chapman has it in his “Flora,” but confines it to
“shaded banks in Alabama and North Carolina.” Professor
Wood finds it in “ woods and hill-sides, Pennsylvania, to Indiana
(Plummer), Missouri and Ohio.” We may gather from all this
that it favors a mountain region, and is partial to the shade of
open woods. In the “Botanical Gazette” for 1876, the editor
notices very singular behavior in the plant in his section, Jeffer-

5 6 PHACELIA BIPINNATIFIDA.—BIPINNATE PHACELIA.

son county, Indiana. He says: “Phacelia bipinnatifida, Mx.,
seems to be very uncertain in its growth. For two seasons |
watched closely for it and did not secure a single specimen; but
this spring our hill-sides are fairly blue with it, and its presence
may be perceived by the peculiar pungent odor rising from it.”
This periodicity in their appearance has however been noted in
connection with some other plants; but whether it be that the
seed retains its vitality for several years until a favorable
season occurs for its germination, or whether it be that there
were a few plants that escaped the researcher's observation,
which perfected seed, and 2. favorable season following encour-
aged toa more than usual growth, has never been clear to the
mind of the writer, and renewed observations are needed.

It is a biennial and has often been introduced to culture, but
has never become a stancard stock in seedsmen’s catalogues,
showing that it does not remain long in gardens. Possibly its
shade-loving character, as judged from its native locations,
renders it impatient of open sunny garden borders; but its beauty
when under favorable circumstances should make it worth while
to attempt to humor it.

The drawing for our plate was made from a plant under Mr.
Dawson’s charge in the Arnold Arboretum of Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

RUDBECKIA FULGIDA.
BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSIT.E.

RUDBECKIA FULGIDA, Aiton.—Stem hirsute with rigid hairs; branches slender, naked above;
leaves strigous-pubescent, remotely dentate, radical petiolate, ovate, five-veined, cauline
lance-oblong, tapering to the sessile, sub-clasping base; scales oblong, spreading, as long
as the spreading rays; pales glabrous, linear oblong, obtuse. Stem from one to three feet
high. Rays twelve to fourteen, scarcely longer than the leafy involucre, deep orange-
yellow. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the
Northern (nited States, and Chapman’s flora of the Southern United States.)

WHE genus Rudbeckia to which our present illustration
belongs has received no common name from the com-

mon people; but botanists have called it the “Cone-flower,”
because the conical receptacle, or that which supports the centre
of the flower, is more conical than that of the sun-flowers (/7/c/ian-
thus) with which it was thought to have some relationship many
years ago. It is proper however to remind the reader that names
must be regarded as but names, and little more; for in naming
a plant from some peculiarity we can never know when another
one may be discovered having the same character though
differing in something else. Indeed it often happens that a new
plant, waiting for a name, has a known peculiarity much
more strikingly developed than its elder sister. We cannot
however alter names on this account, because such a change
would be a greater evil than the misunderstandings from the
application of the term. It has therefore become the habit to
regard lightly the meaning of the name so far as identification
of the plant is concerned. This is worth remembering when we

think of “Cone-flower” in connection with Azddécckia, for there
(57)

53 kKUDBECKIA FULGIDA,— BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER.
are now genera not far removed from Rudbeckia, which have the
receptacle as much and in some cases more conical than these.

The conical receptacle must have attracted considerable atten-
tion from the first, for before the genus was named Rudbeckia
by Linnzus it was described as Oleliscotheca by Sebastian Vail-
lant, a French botanist, the name being from the Greek odclish,
and ¢heca, a cell—the little cell-like florets being arranged on the
obelisk or cone-like receptacle. But Linnaeus when he reformed
botanical nomenclature ruled that generic names, composed of
two distinct nouns, or of two words one of which is entire, if
ever allowed, were not to be imitated; and we can readily
understand why Odelscotheca should be replaced; so in 1737 in
the “Genera Plantarum” of Linnzus we find the genus dedi-
cated to the Rudbecks “Olao patri, et olao filio”—Olaus the
father and Olaus the son—and not merely “frem M. Rudbeck,
a Swede, author of a Botanical work entitled ‘Campos Elysius,’”
as one of our text-books tells us. These Rudbecks were the
predecessors in the Chair of Botany at Upsal in Sweden, and
there seems to be no special reason why their names should be
connected with these plants beyond the fact that Linnzeus had a
high regard for them. It is a distinctively American genus,
having no representatives in the Old World, and to us in these
days it may be allowable to regret that all plants of this charac-
ter did not commemorate the names of those in immediate con-
nection with the knowledge of American plants.

Rudbeckia has many points of interest worthy of the student’s
attention, which, though they can be observed more or less in
many other genera, are striking here. \We may remember that
a flower head in Compostte is as if a piece of wire were drawn
round in many coils; and that if we could draw out this wire-
like coil, it would appear as any ordinary stem growth—say a
long willow branch, with a single flower in the axil of each leaf.
As we know in some plants the leaves remain almost unchanged
as bracts, and in other cases they are wholly wanting, as is
generally the case in the cabbage tribe; so in Composites the

RUDBECKIA FULGIDA.—BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER. 59
-same general principles exist. What are called the scales of
the receptacle are really floral bracts, which in some cases are
wholly obliterated in the drawing in of the spiral coil to form
the compound head. In this genus /udbeckia these scales or
bracts are very prominent in the centre of the flower, and it is
not till the divisions of the little florets are ready to expand that
we see them above the tips of the scales. Again in some com-
posites that have a sort of spicate habit, the plant will complete
its growth before any flowers expand, and then it commences
the blossoming from the top downwards; while others flower
from below upwards as the flower shoot grows. ‘These varying
phases of growth also have a counterpart in these single heads.
Sometimes there is more activity in the centre of the flower than
in the circumference, and these varying phases make differences
in the sexual characters. In some it results in giving the ray
florets an advantage; in Rudbeckia the ray will be found quite
barren, rarely producing the vestige of a pistil, and no sign of a
stamen; while the central or disk florets are perfectly herma-
phrodite, and alone bear perfect seed.

The development of the florets in our present species, 7.
fulgida, is very interesting. The corolla appears to be forced
open by the growth of the pistil, which as it elongates, pushes
on before it an immense quantity of beautiful yellow pollen.
The first knowledge we have of the opening of the flower is
from the appearance of this pollen through the divisions of the
corolla. This profusion of pollen seems very welcome to a
large number of insects, is collected at once, and so completely
that it is only by putting a flower under protection that the
pretty little crown of yellow can be seen and the progress of the
opening florets traced. When it is remembered that a single
grain of pollen is sufficient to fertilize a single ovule, which
finally becomes the seed, one is lost in wonder that so much
effort should be spent on its production, It may be in some
way connected with the plant’s own good, or it may be the
result of a far-reaching Omnipotence making the plant work for

60 RUDBECKIA FULGIDA.—-BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER.

the good of other members of creation, or even for the future of
its own race, beyond its own immediate individual interest.

Our Rudbeckia fulgida has the general aspect of some of its
neighbors, and especially of A. Azvta, from which however its
smooth chaff is a good distinction. The chaff of A. Azr¢a is hairy
at the summit.

In his “School Botany,’’ Dr. Gray gives a list of “the com-
monest species,” and as ours is omitted, we may regard it as
rare. It is indeed much more limited in its geographical range
than some of its kindred, yet one who has seen it so abundantly
as it is found in the meadows of Eastern Pennsylvania may well
wonder why it has not spread more elsewhere.

Pennsylvania seems its northern limit. It extends to Central
Ohio, and then southwesterly to Arkansas, which is its western
line. From this it extends southeasterly to Florida, keeping,
Professor Wood says, chiefly to the more elevated districts.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—I. Root leaves. 2. Upper portion of stem with fluwers. 3.
Disk floret with akene and chaffy scale at the base. 4. Disk floret opened, showing the
short stamens through which the pistil has protruded. Pollen grains on the expanded
lobes. 5. Pollen grain magnified.

Vou. II. . PLatE 715.

CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.

iL. PRANG & CoMPANY. Boston

Var TT

de

CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.

STEMLESS MOCCASIN FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, ORCHIDACE/E.

CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE, Aiton.—Scape leafless, one-flowered ; leaves two, radical, elliptic-oblong,
rather acute; lobe of the column roundish-rhomboidal, acuminate, deflexed; petals Jan-
ceolate; lip longer than the petals, cleft before. Leaves large, plaited, and downy.
Scape ten to fourteen inches high, with a single lanceolate bract at the base of the large,
solitary flower. Sepals half an inch long, the two lower completely united into a broad
lanceolate one beneath the lip. Petals lateral, wavy. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.
See also Gray’s A/anual of the Botany of the Northern United States ; and Chapman’s
Flora of the Southern United States.)

HIS species is one of the best known of the moccasin
S4]| flowers, and has received many popular names. Among
‘ten may be noted purple Lady’s-slipper, Noah's ark, and
Dwarf Umbil, as perhaps the best known. Even the botanists
have multiplied their special names; and while some write
of it under the title of Cypripedium acaule, as given at the
head of this chapter, there are others who always refer to it as
C. humile. The latter name was given to it by Salisbury in the
“Transactions of the Linnzean Society of London,” and the former
by Aiton. Of the modern American authors, Barton, Darby,
and others use Salisbury’s name; while Gray, Chapman, and
Wood employ the name given by Aiton. The two names must
have appeared about the same time at the end of the last cen-
tury. The rule is to take the oldest. Our modern botanists
are generally careful in deciding these questions, and we pre-
sume C. acaule will prevail.

This species of moccasin flower has been known for a long
time to botanists, and a figure of it appears in Curtis’ “ Botanical

Magazine” in 1792. The editor says: “We have not figured
a)

62 CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.—STEMLESS MOCCASIN FLOWER.

the present species of Cypripedium so much on account of its
beauty as of its rarity, for it is far less handsome than any of the
other species that we are acquainted with.” It may be noted
here that the species is very variable, and Mr. Curtis had but
one of the poorest of the varieties to draw from. Cur readers,
looking at our drawing, will probably pronounce it a beautiful
species. We have often found taller specimens on the hills bor-
dering the Susquehanna river in Pennsylvania, besides larger
and more vigorous every way than that which we have selected
for illustration. The color of the one in our plate is, however,
as rich as in any of the forms usually found.

There are some special points in the structure of this Cypripe-
dium which gives its beauty a peculiar interest among moccasin
flowers. The peculiar slipper-like lip, which is so striking in
other species, is modified in this one by having, as Professor
Wood says, “the lip cleft before’”—that is to say, the shoe has
been slit down along the upper portion of the foot! This makes
it look more like a shell than a slipper. Another peculiarity is
that it is stemless—that is, the flower stalk arises directly from
the root stock, and is not supported on a leafy stem, as in other
species. Herein is found the derivation of both of its names—
acaule and humile ; each signifying a lowly condition of existence.
It grows naturally under trees in rather dry situations. Dr.
Gray in the “ Manual” says it is found in “dry or moist woods,
under evergreens.” If this mean that it is only found under
evergreens, the observations of that distinguished author are at
variance with those of other collectors. In Pennsylvania the
writer has but once collected it under hemlock spruces. Its
general place of growth is in woeds of deciduous trees, and in
such situations it is usually found in New Jersey. Though in
these places it is somewhat gregarious, that is to say, a great
number may be often collected in one wood; the individual plants
are much scattered, and are generally at least several feet apart.

One of the most interesting branches of modern botanical
study relates to the manner in which flowers receive their pollen.

CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.—STEMLESS MOCCASIN FLOWER. 63

In some plants the floral arrangements are such that the flower
cannot receive its own pollen, and it seems to some botanists
that this is in accord with a pre-arranged plan to compel the use
only of pollen brought from other flowers by insect aid. In this
study Cypripedium has taken a prominent part, Dr. Gray, in
“ Silliman’s Journal” for 1867, deciding after a careful examina-
tion of the structure “in all the species, it is impossible that fertil-
ization should be effected without extraneous aid.” Our present
species, C. acaule, is one that was the especial object of Dr.
Gray’s examination. He shows that its pollen is very sticky,
and is carried away either bodily or piece-meal on the heads or
other parts of insects. He describes how they enter the flower
by one lateral opening in search of sweets with the pollen on
their heads rubbing against the stigma, and escaping by the hole
on the other side! Dr. Gray says he has not detected insects
actually at work in this way, but he gathers from their traces and
from a variety of facts that, “even in Cypripedium acaule, the
insects act in the manner described.” ‘The study of these singu-
lar arrangements, some connected especially with the plant we
have illustrated here, led him to say, “ Hereafter teleology must
go hand-in-hand with morphology; functions must be studied as
well as forms, and useful ends presumed, whether ascertained or
not, in every permanent modification of every structure.”

It is remarkable that the attempts to cultivate this plant,
extending over the past one hundred years, have met with little
success. According to Aiton, the plant was first introduced into
English gardens in a living state “about 1775 by William Ham-
ilton, Esq.,” and this is generally followed by chronologists.
But we find by Darlington’s “Memorials” that in a letter to
Peter Collinson dated November, 1761, John Bartram writes of
having sent roots of it to his friend. From that time till now
the stock in Europe has been kept up mainly by importation of
full grown roots from our land. Mr. Robinson, in his interesting
“Alpine Flowers,” gives minute directions for its successful cul-
ture, but concludes: “It may be propagated by division, but the

64 CYPRIPEDIUM ACAULE.—-STEMLESS MOCCASIN FLOWER.

plants in the country at present are too small and puny to bear
this.” In our own country a correspondent of the “ Bulletin of
the Torrey Botanical Club,” in the third volume, remarks: “I
cannot keep Cypripedium acaule, although I have seen it in
nearly pure dry sand and in wet sphagnum (moss.) _ It is curious
that C. acaule has only one bud to each plant.” So far as this
last point is concerned, it will be noted that the one illustrated
has two, though only one flowered.

The purple moccasin flower is rather widely distributed. We
have special notes of its being collected in almost all the seaboard
states from Maine to North Carolina. It has been found in
Kentucky, and in the northwestern part of the United States as
far as Minnesota,

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—Complete plant, a Massachusetts specimen furnished by Mr.
Jackson Dawson. 2. The column, or central part of the flower enlarged, and showing the
united mass of stamens with the pistil, or, as it is said, its “gynandrous”’ character.

Vou Il PLATE 16.

CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS.

PRatic & COMPANY, Boston.

CAMPTOSORUS. RHIZOPHYLLUS,
WALKING-LEAF.

NATURAL OFDER, FILICES.

CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS, Link.—Fronds auriculate-cordate at the base, lanceolate, with
a long slender acumination which often takes root at the apex. Frond two to nine inches
long, and half of an inch to an inch wide, evergreen, sometimes bifid with two acuminations ;
stipe one to four inches long, slightly margined above, smooth. Sori often half an inch
in length. (Darlington’s Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the
Northern United States, Chapman’s flora of the Southern United States, and [as Ante-
gramma rhizophylla\ Wood's Class-Book of Botany. Aliso Eaton’s Lerns of North Amer-
ica and Williamson’s Ferns of Kentucky.)

HOSE who are fond of wild Nature, and who love to take
| her just as she is, fresh from her Maker’s hands, often
have to thank their favorite poets for beautiful thoughts which
seem to deeply engrave the scene on the memory, and which
enable them to recall the pleasant picture at any future time.
We have just such an impression as we are writing these lines
on the Walking-leaf Fern, though the reality passed many years
ago. It was on the Lehigh river in Northern Pennsylvania,
and far from human habitations. The Pine trees interlaced their
branches, and little vegetation could exist in the shade beneath ;
only the trailing yew, and, everywhere on the huge scattered
rocks, the Walking-leaf fern. It seemed the very suggestion of
the invocation of the well-known English poet Thomson—
“To Him, ye vocal gales,

Breathe soft whose spirit in your freshness breathes ;

Oh, talk of Him in solitary gloom!

Where, o’er the rock, the scarcely-waving Pine

Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.”

It is indeed generally in these sombre, awe-inspiring, rocky
6

5 (65)

66 CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS. — WALKING-LEAF,

woods that our plant is found in Pennsylvania; and in other
states some similar situation is usually its home. The specimen

for our illustration was gathered near Philadelphia, along the
Wissahickon

«Tn the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade ;
And, bubbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter; ”

and where, if Longfellow had taken this pretty picture from the
very spot, he might have noticed the Walking-leaf on the moss-
grown stones among which here at least it loves to grow.

There has been much controversy as to the kind of rock on
which the plant is found growing, some writers having claimed
for limestone the sole privilege of finding ita home. But great
numbers of observers have since recorded locations on sandstone
rock; and the specimen we illustrate was taken from gneiss, a
variety of granite rock, on the western side of the Wissahickon
before referred to. That it was well satisfied with its location is
seen by its picture, which is a fair average of its condition as
found anywhere. It is however a very variable fern. Many
collectors have found specimens with double fronds, one of the
auricles or ear-like lobes at the base having grown out to
almost the extent of the main blade, and rooting at the ends like
its parent, or, as in such cases one might almost say, sister frond.
Where our specimen was found one frond was gathered which
had both auricles developed into fronds, not as. long as the
central one, all three rooting at the ends, and having a remark-
ably trifid character. Then while there are these variations
in the line of division, there are often found tendencies in the
opposite direction, that is to say, to be entire leaved.

Mr. E. A. Rau, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, contributes to
the first volume of “ The Botanical Gazette” an account of many
varying forms, among others “some bearing sori, in which the
frond is remarkably short, oblong, obtuse, widening at the basé
into obtuse auricles.” When it is noticed, as in our plate,
how long and tapering are the terminations of the fronds,

CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS. WALKING-LEAF, 67

it will be understood how different in general appearance
an oblong obtuse frond must be. Mr. Jacob Stauffer collected
a form at Mount Joy, according to Dr. Gray, with roundish sort
and inconspicuous veins.

There is one character which is generally constant: the veins
seem to cross each other’s path, and form a sort of net-work, or as
it is technically called, they anastomose. The earlier botanists
had overlooked or placed little value on these characters from
the veins of ferns, and hence our species was called by Linnzus
Asplenium rhisophyllum. But the moderns have restricted
Aspleniun to those which have free veins; that is to say, veins
which continue their whole length without touching each other.
Our species was taken from Asfplenium in 1833 by Link, a Ger-
man botanist, and called Camptosorus, the name being derived
from two Greek words, signifying a bent heap, and this because
the sori, or the little long heaps of sporangia, are “generally
curved,” according to John Smith; or as Professor Eaton
explains, “the indusia of the areoles next the midrib are also
often bent at an angle, and the two portions plainly united.”
This manner of veining—called in botany, venation—has not
proved so constant a character in ferns as it was expected to
be by those who first perceived its importance in classification.

In the present instance we have a plant so remarkably near
Asplenium pinnatifidum, that it is difficult for the common
observer to see any material difference till he is told to notice
whether the veins anastomose. On this anastomosing of the
veins, which no morphologist would regard as of great moment,
our plant is placed in a genus almost by itself. Professor
Eaton is no doubt fully justified in his remark that it is by no-
means impossible that Canzp/osorus will be again remanded to
Asplenium, “tor it is now pretty generally admitted that differ-
ences 1n venation do not constitute valid generic distinctions ;”
and one might add scarcely specific differences either, for in
many cases the individual plant varies in this respect. In our
plate the frond (Fig. 4), a younger and barren one, is much

68 CAMPTOSORUS RHIZOPHYLLUS. —- WALKING-LEAF,

more reticulated, or net-veined than the maturer and fruitful
ones (Fig. 2). Indeed it is our experience that when a frond is
abundantly fruitful, the veins are often wholly free. It may be
also remarked that in the enlarged drawing at p. 75 of Mr.
Williamson's “Ferns of Kentucky,’ the veins are all wholly
clear of each other.

Asplenium pinnatifidum is remarkable for its fertility. Often
early formed and small fronds are as completely covered with
sporangia as larger and more recent ones, and it has little dispo-
sition to make terminal buds; while the Camptosorus is compara-
tively a sparse-fruiting fern, and makes up for this by its power
of increasing from terminal buds (whence comes its name rhzzo-
phylum). t would be curious if it should ultimately prove that
the one form has been evolved from the other by a sort of dif-
ference of opinion, as one might almost say, as to the best
methods of reproduction, and that the greater divarication of the
veins in the walking-leaf (which is really all the difference) is a
mere incident in the reproductive question.

The Camptosorus under its older names has been long known
to botanists, having been noticed by Ray, Morison, Plukenet,
and others of the early English authors of the first part of the
eighteenth century. Gronovius had specimens sent to him
both by Clayton from Virginia and Colden from New York.
Michaux found it “not abundant” from “Canada to Tennessee.”
Dr. Gray says its home is from “west New England to Wiscon-
sin and southwards.” The writer of this has found it abundantly |
on the rocks running from east to west across the state in South-
ern Illinois, and Professor Lesquereux found it in Arkansas.

EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.—1. Complete plant. 2. Fertile frond. 3. Rooting point of

one frond. 4. Barren frond conspicuously netted-veined,

eA ae,

PULEMONIUM REPTANS

|. PRANG & Company, Boston.

ote dye aga
ESN ASE Ay

wee eye

POLEMONIUM REPTANS.
CREEPING GREEK VALERIAN.

NATURAL ORDER, POLEMONIACE,

POLEMONIUM REPTANS, Linnzeus.—Smooth and succulent; branched and leaning; leaflets five
to eleven, usually seven to nine, mostly opposite, the terminal one lance-obovate, about
an inch long; common petiole half an inch to two inches in length below the leaflets,
slightly winged, pubescert-ciliate; corymbs few-flowered, nodding; corolla blue, about
three times as long as the calyx; the lobes short, obovate, rounded. Capsule on a short
stipe, in the enlarged, persistent, veined, green, and somewhat membranous calyx. (Dar-
lington’s Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United
States, Chapman’s Alora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.)

HE Greek Valerians, known botanically as Polemonium,
3) form a genus of great interest to the American student,
hand been selected by Jussieu, one of the chief founders of the
natural system of Botany, as the type of the natural order /%ole-
moniacee. The original Greek Valerian, Polemonium ceruleum,
is a native of northern Europe and Asia; but it is also indige-
nous to our own country, and by far the greater bulk’ of the
whole order are American. Indeed, we may regard Polemoniacce
as in the main an American order of plants. Botanists regard
them as somewhat allied in structure to the Bind-weeds or Con-
volvilacee—but they are very different in their aspect. On the
other hand, they have much the general appearance of the
flydrophyllacee or “water-leaf” family, but differ essentially in
placentation, or manner in which the seeds are connected with

the ovarium. In Polemoniacee the placenta is axile, while

Hydrophyllacee it is central, in which case the seeds do not seem
attached to the sides of the capsule, but to a soft mass in the
centre. The two great genera of the eastern United States are

JO POLEMONIUM REPTANS.—CREEPING GREEK VALERIAN.

Phlox and Polemontum. Polemontum is readily distinguished
from Phlox by its bell-shaped corolla, while, as is well known,
the Phlox has its corolla mainly as a long slender tube.

In regard to the history of the name, Polenzonium, the student
may have some ground to complain of the text-books, as they
so often have had to complain in similar cases. A French author
of the last century says: “ Pliny tells us that many kings disputed
the honor of having found the polemonum, which gave to the
plant the name of Polemon, signifying war;” and Sir William J.
Hooker tells us that “it was named from polemos, wav, accord-
ing to Pliny this plant having caused a war between two kings
who laid claim to its discovery.” The explanations read
as if “this plant,” Polemonium ceruleum being in question, was
the plant the “two” kings or the “many” kings fought over;
but the plant is not a native of Greece, nor is it probable that
Pliny had any knowledge whatever of “this plant,” and it is much
better when inquiring why Tournefort called the plant Po/emo-
gun, to say with Dr. Gray in the “Manual” “an ancient name
of doubtful application.” And in his more recent “ Synoptical
Flora of North America,” he even suggests that it is more prob-
able Tournefort had in his mind to commemorate Polemon, the
celebrated Athenian scholar, who succeeded Xenocrates in his
famous school.

The common name, Greek Valerian, is more easily traced. In
older times, when the structure of plants was not well under-
stood, groups were formed according to their external resem-
blances. There is much in the habit of the genus to suggest the
Valerian, and thus we find them in the writings of the old botan-
ists. Dcedens, who wrote in 1616, calls it Valeriana greca, and
Bauhin, thirty years later, Valeriana cerulea, though he takes
occasion to remark that it “has nothing in common with the
Valerian, except something in the shape of the leaves.” Finally
taken from the Valerians, and given a separate name, Polemonium,
by Tournefort, we can at least see exactly how it came by the
name of Greek Valerian.

POLEMONIUM REPTANS.—CREEPING GREEK VALERIAN. 71

The unfortunate confusion in the name results, as such seem-
incly trifling mistakes often do, in errors of great consequence.
The true Valerians have great medical virtues, perhaps great
enough to warrant ancient kings fighting about them, and thus
we find the old Herbalists, with Culpeper leading, assuring us
that the “Greek Valerian is under Mercury, and is alexipharnic,
-sudorific, and cephalic, and useful in malignant fevers and _pesti-
lential distempers;” but as soon as it was proved not to be a
Valerian, it was found that the virtues were wholly imaginary.

Our species has been long known to botanists, being referred
to by Gronovius in Clayton’s early collections from Virginia. It
differs from the older known Polemontume ceruleum in its creep-
ing habit, besides in other characters, and this characteristic
suggested the name 7cf/ans, or “creeping Greek Valerian.” In
Pennsylvania, where it is common in alluvial bottoms along rivers
and water-courses, it is often called “Forget-me-not;” but as it
has nothing in common with

“The flower which has a flower as bright as noon,
And leaf as delicate as softest satin,
Called the Forget-me-not, but known as well
By twenty names I cannot stop to tell,”

as Sargent sings of it, it would be as well to let it drop. “Jacob's
Ladder” is sometimes used because of its ladder-like leaf. It is
well to refer to these names ina history of the plant; but “creeping
Greek Valerian” will probably prevail. It is one of the earliest
of our spring flowers, and brightens with a singular beauty the
half-shady places wherein it loves to grow. Longfellow, in his
beautiful poem, “Flowers,” scarcely had this plant in his mind
when he wrote—

“ Everywhere about us are they growing,
Some like stars to tell us Spring is come;
Others, their blue eyes with tears o’erflowing,
Stand like Ruth among the golden corn; ”

as the “blue eyes” of our speeies seldom if ever look at us from
grain-fields; but as we may often see its beautiful sky-blue flow-

72 POLEMONIUM REPTANS.—CREEPING GREEK VALERIAN.

ers, dotted with the pure white anthers growing along the Wis-
sahickon, and telling us that “Spring is come,” there is a
something impressive which invariably associates them with
Longfellow's lines. It is a plant easily found by the lover of
wild flowers, as it has a rather wide distribution in all the states
east of the Mississippi except those in the extreme north-east,
and those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.

The creeping Greek Valerian is a very easy plant to cultivate,
and indeed it is when growing in the country gardens of Penn-
sylvania that it generally receives the name of “ Forget-me-not.”
A peculiarity of cultivation is that while the amount of foliage is
increased, there is seldom any more increase in the quantity of
flowers than we find in a wild state; so that a good strong stock
in its native place of growth seems more beautiful than one
growing in a garden. In cultivation, however, we find more
variety in the shades of color, as they happen to be selected by
those who bring them in from their wild locations. It is not
uncommon to find flowers of a brighter blue than we have
selected for our plate. On the other hand, they are often seen
of a pure white. In any condition the plant would be regarded
as pretty, and will bear a strict scrutiny in regard to some claim
to beauty. The general tendency in the habit of growth is
towards straight, slender lines, without any great variety in
length or direction—but the roundish fowers make a fair con-
trast to the straight lines, and the gentle curve caused by the
weight of the flowers expresses unity in the general effect. Still,
it must be admitted that its claim to be a pretty flower lies chiefly
in the contrast which the blue makes with the white anthers.

J

sarbenee Spiess

CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS.

LARGE YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, ORCHIDACE.

CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS, Willdenow.—Stem leafy, leaves broad-lanceolate, acuminate; sepals
lanceolate; lip shorter than the linear, twisted petals, compressed laterally, convex both
above and below; sterile stamen triangular, acute; plant pubescent. Stems usually sev-
eral from the same root, one foot or more high. Leaves three to six inches long by two to
three wide, many-veined, clasping at the base. Flower mostly solitary. Segments four,
greenish with purple stripes and spots, the lower bifid, composed of two united sepals, the
lateral two to three inches long by three lines wide, wavy and twisted. Lip moccasin-
shaped, bright yellow, spotted inside, with a roundish aperture. (Wood's Class- Book of
Botany. See also Gray’s Afanual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and
Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States.)

HE large yellow is one of the best known of the Moc-
a kA casin Flowers; and yet there are interesting facts con-
nected with it that do not seem to be well known to botanists,
or at least are not noted in the descriptions some of them give.
These little facts, however, teach the student some interesting les-
sons, and it is chiefly because Professor Wood has noted some
of these that we have selected for our chapter the description
from his work. For instance, we read in most accounts of our
species that the flowers are bright yellow, that the petals are linear
and twisted, and that the lateral sepals are of such a given width;
and the student is liable to suppose that nature has an exact
character for her species, whereas her limits are clastic, and we

may almost always look for some variations from even the best
written descriptions without any ground for imagining we have
a new species because the plant in question and the most
popular description do not exactly correspond. Our present
illustration of the large yellow Moccasin Flower will be found

74 CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS,—LARGE YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER.

to vary somewhat from many descriptions, and from some of
the drawings of which there have been quite a number given
during the past century. For instance, the sepals—which are
the two external portions forming the upward and downward
back portion of the flower—are scarcely wavy. nor are the two
narrower portions (petals) in front, and on each side of the
“moccasin” or lip ; again, the flower is not “ bright” yellow in our
specimen, and there is a faint trace of white on the upper portion
of the “foot.” The reader knows that all these parts of the
flower were originally designed by nature to be ordinary green
leaves, and that it was only by a subsequent change of plan that
she altered them into sepals, petals, and other floral parts; and
it is interesting to note that when she goes to work on this
change of leaves to flowers, she generally carries along some
peculiarities especially belonging to the leaves. Now in the
usual forms of the large yellow Moccasin Flower which we
meet with, we find the leaves very much undulated, botanically
speaking, or, as we may Say, with wavy and twisted margins;
and it is in the cases where they are the most waved that we
have the greatest twisting of the floral segments. In our speci-
men, where we see little twisting of these parts, we have cor-
respondingly less waviness in the leaf margins. It is a very
interesting example of the correspondence of character in the
leaves, and in the floral parts which have been made from the
leaves, though in so many other particulars they have been led
to diverge from each other. ;

The large yellow Moccasin Flower is very closely allied to the
Cypripedium Calccolus of Europe, which gave the name of
“Lady Slipper” to the family; and by this name the botanical
Cypripedium was suggested to Linneus. Indeed, the earlier
American botanists wrote of our plant as being the same, and
as C Calceolus it is referred to in some of their writings. It
may, therefore, lay claim to a share in whatever of popular his-
tory relates to that species. In the past ages, when everything
common was invested with religious associations, we find the

CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS.—LARGE YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER. 75

Lady’s Slipper written of as “our Lady’s Slipper,” and to this
day the popular names in France are “ Sabot de Ja Vierge” and
“Soulier de Notre Dame,” names having the same signification.

It is interesting to note how very much our knowledge of plants
has increased in modern times, and especially our knowledge
of the structure of orchids—the family to which Cypripedium
belongs. One of the earliest of American botanists, Dr. Cadwal-
lader Colden, of New York, writing, about 1744, to the cele-
brated Gronovius, remarks of Cypripedium, “two stamina seem
not sufficient to me to impregnate the great quantity of seed con-
tained in the capsule.” Now we know that a mass of pollen is
made up of innumerable grains, every one of which is equal to
the fertilization of a single ovule. It is believed that the
flowers can be pollenized only by the aid of insects, and it is
remarkable that a plant is rarely found which has flowered and
not perfected seed, and yet again it is singular that insects are
rarely seen visiting the flowers. Dr. Asa Gray, who once made
a special study of these plants with a view to ascertain their
relation to insects, notes that though he found insect traces he
was never able to detect the insects actually at work. The
chapter of these remarkable circumstances, however, is not yet
complete, for we have to note that the seeds are very small, and
that an immense number are produced in each capsule, while
notwithstanding the trouble nature seems to have taken to
arrange that seed shall only follow the visits of insects to the
flowers, scarcely any of these seeds grow. We may note a
group of a few dozen plants in any one place, and for years
afterwards, with little increase in number in all that time. So
rare is it that we have any evidence of seeds of these plants
growing in their native places, that Dr. Jonathan Stokes, the
botanist of the olden time, after whom our Svokesza is named,
was led to exclaim that “Gardeners might make the botanists
amends for rooting out these rare wild plants in their natural
places of growth and at the same time enrich themselves, if they
would prove by experiment that one at least of the orchis tribe

76 CYPRIPEDIUM PUBESCENS.—LARGE YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER.

could be raised from seed.” By very nice care the tropical
epiphytal, or tree-loving kinds, have been raised from seed—but
we kelieve Dr. Stokes’ remarks have vet much force so far as
the natural growth of these hardy orchids from seeds is con-
cerned. Of the large yellow Cypripedium great numbers of
plants are annually shipped to Europe by dealers, and for want
of nature filling the gap by new seedlings, the species is now
rarely found where florists have a chance to dig up the roots.

Our specimen was furnished for drawing by Messrs. Hoopes
Bros. & Thomas of West Chester, Pennsylvania, who report
that it was a root received from Massachusetts.

In Pennsylvania it lowers in May, and grows in rather moist,
bushy places, or in open woods. Farther north it is found as
late as June. It is met with in most of the Northern States

as far west as Minnesota, and southward to Kentucky and
Georgia.

RIA
LA

MARGINATA

Pate 19.

FUPHORBIA MARGINATA.,

SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN.

NATURAL ORDER, EUPHORBIACE/E.

EUPHORBIA MARGINATA, Pursh.—Leaves oblong-lanceolate, sub-cordate, sessile, acute, mucro-
nate, entire on the margin, glabrous; umbel three-rayed, once or twice dichotomous;
involucrate leaves oblong, colored and membranaceous at the margin; inner segments of
the floral involucre roundish ; capsule hairy-pubescent. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.)

OME of the plants now recognized as Euphorbia were
also known to the ancients, and references to them
occur in some of the oldest writings extant. The genus com-
prises an immense number of species; and yet, as intelligent
men penetrate unexplored portions of the globe, they occa-
sionally find new kinds to add to the already large list. Great
numbers of them prefer hot and dry places, and so as what are
called the deserts of our country became explored, and plants
not known before were discovered, new Euphorbias of all others
would be likely to be found among them. In the early part of
the present century very little was known of the plants growing
beyond the Mississippi or the Missouri. It was not until 1814
when Pursh issued in London his work on the “ Flora of North.
America,” that we had any knowledge of the flowers of this part
of our country, and it is in this work that our present subject
was first named and described, But though the credit of estab-
lishing the name may be given to Pursh under botanical rules, it
does not follow that he was the original collector of the plants
he wrote of. He was never beyond the Mississippi river, and
he was indebted to the expedition of Lewis and Clarke for
much of his material. Some of the dried specimens of this

expedition fell into his hands, and were used by him for his
(77)

78 EUPHORBIA MARGINATA.—SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN.

work. Reference is made to this fact in order to furnish a
lesson in Botanical Geography. The home, as we may say, of
our plant about fifty years ago, was in the drier parts of our
country, between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains.
Since that time it has progressed eastward rapidly, and it is
more than probable that at no very distant date it will be found
wild up to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Professor Wood,
from whose “Class Book” we have taken our description,
notes, in 1861, that it was wild abundantly on the shores of the
Kentucky river, at Paris, in Kentucky State. In 1872, Pro-
fessor Bessey notes, in the “American Naturalist” for that year,
that it was then in great abundance in west and northwestern
Iowa, and Mr. Arthur includes it now in the regular catalogue
of the Flora of that state; and in the “Bulletin of the Torrey
Botanical Club” for 1876, we find Mr. R. Burgess noting that it
was abundant along the Missouri valley in Missouri. In regard
to Indiana, notice of its existence is recorded, so early as 1870 in
the “ Botanical Gazette,” as abundant at Madison; and the same
season its first appearance at Logansport is recorded in the
same magazine. This shows how it is marching on to the
acquisition of more territory, and as of course only one plant
can exist on the same spot, other species of plants are eventu-
ally crowded out by the intruders. But it is quite probable that
the plant did not exist in any great abundance, even in its
natural home, till civilized man came to its aid. It does not
flourish remarkably well when struggling with the regular flora
of the same region; but when the railroad was made and the
earth in various ways disturbed, the plant appeared in such
abundance, that the untutored observers thought it must have
sprung from seed that had lain in the ground dormant for cen-
turies. But the facts in these and similar cases are that a few
plants spring from chance seeds, and, being so few, produce
seeds unobserved; these seeds falling on soil just suited to
them nearly all grow, and then by their unusually large num-
bers attract attention. It has in this way become particularly

EUPHORBIA MARGINATA.—SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN. 79

attractive to the traveller over these far western railroads, as it
is in its best dress only along the lines where the soil has been
disturbed.

Mr. James Vick, the well-known florist, and enthusiastic
admirer of flowers, passing over one of these railroads across
Kansas soon after its opening, was struck by its novel appear-
ance, and thus wrote home about it: “This Luphorbca mar-
ginata is a very pretty annual, making a plant, in the newly dis-
turbed soil, of nearly two feet in height, and having the appear-
ance of a shrub or a miniature tree. The largest of the leaves
are nearly two inches in length, growing smaller as they approach
the tops of the branches. The leaves are of a very pretty light
green, surrounded by a margin of clear snowy white, on the
large leaves merely a line, becoming wider as the leaves get
smaller, until the smallest are nearly or quite pure white, as are
also the flower bracts. It grows abundantly, and is called by
the people here ‘Snow on the Mountain,’ and we thought this a
very appropriate name.” ‘The florist is not alone in paying trib-
ute to its natural beauty ; even the botanist often pauses to express
his admiration of that element in this flower, though beauty has
no recognized place in his systems of classifications. Thus Mr.
Burgess, in the note already referred to, speaks of the dazzling
splendor of certain plants growing over the “rarely carved
Bluffs,” among which he especially notes our plant as “strug-
gling up the side, over the summit at last!” The “Botanical
Gazette,”
“It seemed to make its appearance quite suddenly at Madison a

in speaking of its existence at Madison, Indiana, says:

few years ago, but is spreading with wonderful rapidity, covering
only such hills and parts of hills as have been cleared of timber,
and are covered with sand or gravel. It ranges over many acres
of the hilly ground, and is creeping slowly to the level ground.
Its milky juice is very abundant, and may some day yield in its
gum, to investigating industry, an ample return for its cultivation.
Those who have occasion, however, to handle it, had better not
do so with abraded skin, and should be careful not to convey any

80 EUPHORBIA MARGINATA.—SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN.

to the mouth, as the principle Euphorbin is exceedingly irritating
in minute quantities, and may be fatal in large portions.”

Since its introduction to our gardens its singular beauty has
been recognized by florists, and it often enters into the artistic
floral work known as “bedding,” or the growing of plants in
large masses with regard to their harmonies of color. It is
quite likely that in time some varieties may be discovered which
will give an increased floral interest to this beautiful plant.
Even in nature some variations from the normal form are found
at times, and a very striking one is referred to in Engelmann
and Gray’s account of Lindheimer’s Texan collections. This one
is described as having the broad white margin often more or less
crisped. This variety they name Euphorbia marginata variety
woleuca, and if its peculiar crispy character could be developed
it would be highly prized by florists.

PLATE 20)

ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS.

L. PRANG & COMPANY, Boston

SERIES IL Vou. L

ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS.

SWEET SHIELD-FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES,

ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS, Swartz.—Fronds four to twelve inches high, glandular and aromatic, nar-
rowly lanceolate, with linear-oblong pinnately-parted pinnee; their crowded divisions
oblong, obtuse, toothed or nearly entire, nearly covered beneath with the very large, thin,
imbricated indusia, which are orbicular with a narrow sinus, the margin sparingly glandu-
liferous and often ragged. (Gray’s AJanual of the Botany of the Northern Unitea States.
See also Wood’s Class- Book of Botany, and Eaton's Ferns of North America.)

; ) and the genera and species have a certain general
resemblance to each other, so that few can be mistaken in their
relationship. Thus those who know little of botany as a science
can usually tell a fern when they see it, and can understand by
this what a botanist means when he speaks of any particular
family of vlants as being a very natural one.

From this particular sameness in the general aspects of ferns,
one might suppose that little could be said of each species in
detail. In common language one might imagine that a “fern
was merely a fern, and nothing more ;” but in truth beneath this
general uniformity of dress lies a great variety of character, and
the lessons we may derive from each species are almost as
numerous as we might gather from the study of individual human
beings. Weare often told of the lessons we may learn from
flowers; but the lessons from plants which have no proper
flowers, as ferns have not, are no less inviting. In some respects
they have advantages which flowering plants have not, for often
a flowering plant possesses but little interest to the average

botanist when it is not in bloom, while the fern is generally inter-
6 (81)

82 ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS.— SWEET SHIELD-FERN.

esting to him at all seasons, for a fertile plant will frequently fur-
nish specimens “in fruit” during most of the summer season,
and in some cases long after the wild woods have lost their
autumn foliage, and present in the language of the poet Winter—

“ Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,”

may the botanical inquirer find all he wants to know in the
lingering fronds of some hardy fern.

Our present species, Aspidium fragrans, is particularly rich in
lessons, both as to its historical relationships and in the many
points which are essentially its own. Until comparatively recent
times it was supposed to be wholly an Old World fern. It has
been long known to European botanists, and was described by
Linnzeus now much over a century ago as Polypodium fragrans.
It was first found in the United States by Dr. C. C. Parry, the
botanist attached to Owen’s Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa
and Minnesota in 1852. In the Report of this Survey, Dr. Parry
says he found this fern on the Trap Rocks, near the Falls of St.
Croix, and he remarks “the whole fern is beset with fragrant
glandular hairs. It grows in dense tufts, in the shaded crevices
of trap rocks, with the withered remains of several years’ growth
still adhering. The fronds are of a deep greén color above,
paler below, four to nine inches high. The aroma is permanent
and agreeable. I am informed by Dr. Torrey that this species
has never before been found within the limits of the United
States, but has been obtained in British America and Kam-
schatka, where it is used for making tea. In the locality here
specified, it is quite abundant.” Since 1852 it has been found in
many other parts of the Union bounding the Canadian territory,
as for instance in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New
York. New locations are occasionally yet found for it, and the
possibility of finding it where it has never been met with before
gives zest to the plant collector who may be on botanical excur-
sions through the Northern States. The natural situation where
it may be found is well suggested in the extract from Dr.

ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS. —SWEET SHIELD-FERN. 8 3

Parry’s report. One of the more recent discoverers, Mr. C. G.
Pringle, who saw it growing on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in a
letter to the writer under date of April 13, 1879, gives so excel-
lent a description of how the plant appears in its native home
that we are tempted to quote it here: “In the several stations
of Aspidium fragrans among the Green Mountains, which I have
explored, the plant is always seen growing from the crevices or
on the narrow shelves of dry cliffs—not often such cliffs as are
exposed to the sunlight, unless it be on the summits of the
mountains, but usually such cliffs as are shaded by firs, and
notably such as overhang mountain rivulets and waterfalls.
When I visit such places in summer, the niches occupied by the
plants are quite dry. I think it would be fatal to the plant if
much spray should fall on it during the season of its active
growth. When you enter the shade and solitude of the haunts
of this fern its presence is betrayed by its resinous odor: looking
up the face of the cliff, usually mottled with lichens and moss,
you see it often far above your reach hanging against the rock,
masses of dead brown fronds, the accumulations of many years,
preserved by the resinous principle which pervades them; for
the fronds as they disport regularly about the elongating caudex,
fall right and left precisely like a woman’s hair. Above the
tuft of drooping dead fronds which radiate from the centre of
the plant, grow from six to twenty green fronds, which represent
the growth of the season, those of the preceding year dying
towards autumn.” Its filical companions in this locality are
Cystopteris fragilis, Polypodium vulgare, and IWoodsia [lvensis.
The observations of Dr. Parry and Mr. Pringle not only
interest us in the pen-picture of the home of our sweet-scented
shield-fern, but will be very useful to those who desire to cul-
tivate it. It has been under culture in English gardens since
1820, and is still popular with the hardy fern growers there, not-
withstanding the influx of new favorites. A writer on hardy
cultivated ferns in the Gardener's Chronicle for February 8, 1879,
says it is regarded there as “a charming little species, very sweet-

84 ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS.—SWEET SHIELD-FERN.

scented, Planted in a select position it will do very well
indeed.”

The tea made from the leaves is referred to by various authors
as very agreeable, and Professor Eaton says some writers have
compared the fragrance of the plant to that of raspberries.

Our space will not permit of an extended analysis of its more
purely botanical points of interest. From Lolypodium fragrans
it was made Aspidium fragrans by Swartz in 1771; and this is
generally followed by American authors, though it will be found
as Lastrea jragrans in most English works. Various authors
speak of it as Nephrodium, or Polystichum. It varies much in
the forms and characters of its fronds, as indeed we must pre-
pare ourselves to expect with most species of ferns. In
specimens before us from Alaska collected by W. W. Harrington
on Dall's exploring expedition of 1871 and 1872, the main
rachis and those of the divisions of the frond are slender and
hair-like, while Wisconsin specimens of Hale and Lapham have a
very coarse and heavy look. Our illustration from a specimen
growing under the care of Mr. Jackson Dawson, of the Arnold
Arboretum, Mass., shows a fair average form.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. A plant divested of its old nest-like leaves. 2. A pinnule
very much enlarged. 3. Portion of the under side of a pinnule, showing the remark-
ably scaly rachis. 4. A lobe very much enlarged, showing the indusium as well charac-
terized in Dr, Gray’s description, and also the resinous dots.

PLATE 2],

sk

tay,
. cesar

A anata ARE NO é
oll ett

.

ERIGERON BELLIDIPOLIUM,

POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN.

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITE.

ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM, Muhlenberg.—Rays crowded and rather conspicuous; purplish,
Plant hoary-villous; stem simple and few-leaved ; leaves spatulate and lance-oblong; heads
large, few, corymbose; rays broadish. Perennial; stoloniferous. Stem nine to eighteen
inches high. Radical leaves one to three inches long, spatulate and obovate, contracted to
amargined petiole; stem leaves sub-serrate; the upper ones entire or denticulate, some-
what clasping. Heads of flowers two to three, or five (rarely seven. or nine) in a loose
terminal corymb,—the lower peduncles axillary, long and flaccid; rays pale bluish-purple ;
achenes smooth. (Darlington’s Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Flora of the Northern
United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of
Botany.) :

R. DARLINGTON, from whose work we have taken our
description, the drawings being made from a Pennsyl-

vania plant growing near to where he wrote, gives “ Flea-bane” as
one of the common names of the genus, and so do most of our
Botanical Text-books; while some authors speak of our plant as
the “ Daisy-leaved”’ and “Early-flowering” Flea-bane. The plant,
however, has very little relation to the true Flea-bane; and in
examining the reasons for the appellation, we learn a valuable
lesson as to the making and perpetuation of errors, when the
care to be strictly accurate which we endeavor to exercise in
preparing “The Native Flowers and Ferns” is not taken.
Green tells us that the name of Blue Flea-bane was unfortu-
nately given to the £77geron acre by “some English botanists,
which thus tends to confound it with Conyza.” And of Conyza
sguamosa the old herbalists say, “the juice of the whole plant
cures the itch, by external application, and the very smell of
the herb is said to destroy fleas.” Both of these are European

86 ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM.—POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN,

plants. We see that the mere accident of some general appear-
ance in the flower led some botanists into calling that species
“Blue Flea-bane ;” and our botanists, with far less excuse, left
the “ Blue” off. and gave the common name of the Conyza, Flea-
bane, to the whole genus Ey7geron. So far 2s the writer of
this can learn, the name of “Flea-bane” was never used by
the people of the United States for these plants until it was
employed in botanical works, and very rarely if at all now,
which renders the introduction of the misleading name into our
literature the more unpardonable. Even the common name
for this species, “Poor Robin's Plantain,’ has been modified
by botanists in various ways. Sims, in the “ Botanical Magazine,”
many years ago, figured it, and says: “It grows from North
Carolina to Canada, where it is known as ‘Poor Robin’s
Plantain.’” Dr. Gray, in “School Botany,” cuts it down to
“Robin’s Plantain,” Prof. Wood to “Robins’ Plantain,’ and Dr.
Darlington “Poor Robert's Plantain.” The origin of the com-
mon name is not clear; but if ever the occasion should arise
to make an investigation important, the student would prob-
ably be misled by these careless alterations in the orthography
of the names.

The specific name, dc//rdifolium, was suggested by Dr. Muh-
lenberg in a letter to Willdenow, who adopted it in the de-
scription of the plant in his “Species Plantarum.” It signifies
having a leaf like the Lelis perennis or English daisy, though
there is no very close resemblance. The best that can be said
is that it is perhaps more nearly like the leaf of that popular
English flower than the leaves of other species are. A
peculiarity of the genus Zrigeron is to have a large number of
ray florets, and in this respect the whole family has a resemblance
to the daisy, and our present species may carry the association
closer to this great national favorite, because like it the earliest
spring meets its opening flowers. It is the first of all the Ameri-
can Exigerons to bloom. We may say of it as Burns said to his
“ Mountain daisy:”

ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM.— POOR ROBIN'S PLANTAIN, 87

“ Cold blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou venturest forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the earth
Thy tender form.”

The writer has: gathered flowers of this daisy-like species
among the snow in a late spring. The generic name, Evigeron,
according to Milne, is “ from ey, the spring, and geron, the Greek
name for senecio; that is, a senecio which flowers in spring.” It
may be observed that gevoz really means an old man, as its Lat-
inized form sezecto does—from sezex, old,—and this is in allusion
to the copious white pappus often in globose masses like a head
of white silken hair. But Z77gerons do not all bloom in spring.
There is another species, LZrigeron Philadelphicum, which is very
closely allied to this, one of the chief differences being that while
our present subject is often in bloom by the end of April, and is
rarely found in blossom after June, the £. Philadelphicum does
not commence to open its flowers till June, and often continues
till August at least in Pennsylvania. The creeping runners or
stolons (Fig. 3) also distinguish this species, the £. Philadct-
phicum always having a tufted root stock. While on this sub-
ject of botanical differences, it may be noted that in many
genera of composite plants it is very easy to distinguish one from
another by something in its aspect which is very hard to define
in words. ‘The practised collector can almost always tell an
Erigeron when he meets with it for the first time, the very large
number of ray florets being in a great measure a character-
istic. Yet the botanist, when he comes to analyze the struc-
ture closely, finds it difficult to tell how to distinguish it from an
Aster, a Diplopappus or some of the other neighboring genera.
Some of the species, indeed, have a double pappus, as in the last-
named genus, especially those which bloom in the fall season,
about the time when Diplopappus is generally found, and in these
cases the appendages of the style, shorter and blunter than in
Diplopappus, form all beyond the “popular aspect” that is relied

2

88 ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM.—POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN.

on to distinguish it. There are numerous species in the United
States, abounding chiefly in the higher regions, but the popular
aspect referred to characterizes them all. Our species is one of
the most frequently met with in the Eastern States.

It is not particularly confined to open meadows, though often

found there.

“ But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,
Plays cn the margin of the rill,
Peeps round the fox’s den”? —

as Montgomery says of its celebrated English ally. It is
almost impossible for the average collector to make very exten-
sive journeys in spring time without meeting it. Very often it
forms thick patches many yards in extent, keeping down most
other vegetation, by its creeping stems—and then its bluish-pur-
ple flowers give a peculiar feature to the spring vegetation even
when seen from long distances.

Beyond its spring beauty—though that is no mean element of
usefulness—the “ Poor Robin's Plantain” has not made for itself
much of a name in the service of man. Rafinesque, one of the
most industrious authors in the early part of the present century,
gives a special chapter to the medical virtues of the Z. Philaded-
fhicum, and seems to include our species, which he calls “the
Daisy Flea-bane, a Vernal Vernil,” amongst others, when he says:
“They were known to the Northern Indians by the name of
Cocash or Squaw-weed as menagogue and diuretics.” As a
styptic he thinks “they have saved many lives.” It is extremely
useful when applied to wounds and tumors.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. A plant from Pennsylvania taken in May, 2. Upper por-
tion of flower stalk. 3. Runners which later in the season form new plants at their ends,

SLATE 99.

PINGUICULA LU'TBA

“ar. 1K

PINGUICULA LUTEA,

YELLOW BUTTERWORT

NATURAL ORDER, LENTIBULARIACE,

PINGUICULA LUTEA, Walter.—Leaves from ovate to oblong-ovate, an inch or two long; scapes
five to twelve inches high; corolla an inch or less long; the lobes longer than the short-
campanulate tube with the saccate base, all or the lower and lateral usually four-lobed or
two-cleft with the divisions obcordate, or variously sinuate: spur subulate, as long as the
sac and tube; palate oblong, very salient, densely bearded. (Gray’s Synoptical Flora
of North America. See also Wood's Class-Book of Botany, and Chapman’s flora of
the Southern United States.)

T is always interesting to know the origin of names, and
3} their meaning; not so much because it is any great
Bula to the knowledge of the plant itself, as that it keeps us
from error, and this is equal to knowledge. In connection with
our present subject we may note that the long known species of
Europe, Pinguicula vulgaris, among its numerous English names
was known as the “ Yorkshire Sanicle;” and, misguided by this
name, a popular English medical oor of the last century—the
“Botanalogia” by Salmon—figures the Sanzcula Europea for the
true “ Butterwort” which is the old Pixguicula. It is possible

that there may be a similar misconception as to the origin of
the generic name Pinguzcula. All our text-books tell us that it
is from fugues, Latin for fat, “the leaves being mostly greasy to
the touch, whence the name.” But there is nothing particularly
greasy in the appearance or feel of the European Butterwort
more than in other familiar plants to suggest to the common
people any such special name for it.

The botanical name, Pengurcula, seems to have been first used
by Conrad Gesner, of Zurich, in Switzerland, who published in

gO PINGUICULA LUTEA.—YELLOW BUTTERWORT.

Basil, in 1541, a history of plants. It had long been known as
“Butterwort” by the English, and it would be quite natural for
the common name to suggest the botanical one, and “ Pingui-
cula” would regularly follow. But “ Butterwort” does not seem
to have been derived from the greasy feel of the leaves, but
from the power possessed by the plant of rapidly turning cream
into butter. Linnzeus observed that the soft white hair which
covered the leaf secreted a glutinous fluid. These glutinous
leaves were put by the inhabitants of northern Europe into a
sieve, and then the fresh milk of the reindeer passed through,
and in a day or so afterwards it became a firm buttery mass.
This butter was a popular article of diet with the Swedes, and it
is as fair a deduction that a plant which actually made butter,
should thereby earn the name of “ butterwort,” or butterplant,
as that it comes from the leaves having a greasy feel which might
suggest any oily, greasy feel, as well as that derived from butter.
Moreover, old Gerarde, one of the earliest writers on English
gardening, calls the plant “ Butter-root,” which he would scarcely
do, if the “butter” was simply in relation to the greasy feel of
the leaves. Asa rule, it would be just as well if names meant
nothing; but when they are supposed to be connected with the
history of the plant, it becomes important that the history should
be scrupulously correct. It may be noted here that Gesner
supposed the European Prngiicu/a was the plant referred to by
Pliny as Dodecatheon, but this name was subsequently transferred
by Linnaus to an American genus of plants having little relation
to this.

Pinguicula has become a plant of more than usual interest
since Mr. Darwin discovered that the acrid excretion of the
leaves catches insects and in a manner digests them. Besides
that, a considerable amount of motion is exercised by the leaves
when catching insects. Mr. Darwin noticed that the glands
secreted much more freely when excited by touch; and the leaves
which had the glands the most sensitive in this respect were
those which exhibited the most motion. The motion is, however,

PINGUICULA LUTEA.—YELLOW BUTTERWORT. gt

very slow. It is simply the incurving of the leaf over the insects,
seeds, or other objects caught; and occupied about fifteen hours
under Mr. Darwin's observation. It thus appears that the
motion has no direct relation to insect-catching, for they are
caught and held long before by the viscid glands; but Mr.
Darwin found that the greater the number of glands that
could apply their secretions to the insects caught, the more
rapidly did digestion go on, and this motion, therefore, appears
rather as an aid in nutrition than as a mere insect-catching
power as in some plants. Mr. Darwin closes a lengthy but
highly interesting paper on his experiences with the common
Pingicula by remarking, “we may therefore conclude that with
its small roots it is not only supported to a large extent by the
extraordinary number of insects which it habitually captures, but
likewise draws some nourishment from the pollen, leaves, and
seeds of other plants, which often adhere to its leaves. It is
therefore partly a vegetable as well as an animal feeder.” It is
well worth while to inform ourselves of these wonderful dis-
coveries of Mr. Darwin in connection with the old world plants,
because it is more than likely that some highly interesting obser-
vations may be made on other species, of which there are some
half a dozen natives of the United States, and especially on the
one we have now before us, the “Yellow Butterwort.” Its
leaves are also clammy-pubescent; and, as will be seen by our
plate, it has the remarkably disproportionate roots to leaves so
specially noted by Mr. Darwin as a reason why the leaves
should aid in the direct nutrition of the plant. In this way it
may yet make a history for itself, towards which, so far, it has
done little. All that it has yet contributed is the fact, that it is
one of the pretty spring-flowers which give such a charm to the
early season of the southern United States. Mr. A. P. Garber
tells us in a sketch of early southern flowers, in the first volume
of the “Botanical Gazette,’ that it was one of the first that
greeted him on landing at Palatka, Florida, on the 16th of Feb-
ruary; and Mrs. Mary Treat, to whom, through Professor Sar-

g2 PINGUICULA LUTEA.—YELLOW BUTTERWORT.

gent, of Cambridge, Mass., we are indebted for the specimen
from which our drawing was made, reports that it is one of the
most beautiful of the early floral attractions of that State. Other
observers from further northward report that it often grows in
immense patches in rather sandy places, especially in the Pine
barrens, where, in March, it forms. brilliant golden sheets of
bloom. Its favorite situation seems to be in locations rather
damp than dry.

To botanists it is an old acquaintance, having been noted by
Walter, who published a “ Flora of Carolina,” in 1788. Lamarck,
in 1792, named it Pinguicula campandlata, but the prior name of
Walter's, under botanical rules, is the accepted one. Beyond
this it has no synonyms of importance, though Professor Gray
notes that it probably has some varieties.

The natural order to which it belongs, Lentibulariacee, is a
very small one, containing scarcely half a dozen genera, of which
Utricularia and our present genus constitute the most important
representatives. The name Lentibulariacee is derived from
what was once the genus Lezéebularta, but which has since
been absorbed by Utricularia, the well-known and _ curious
“ Bladderwort.”

Our artist has presented the flowers in so many aspects that a
detailed explanation is scarcely necessary. Fig. 2 shows the
two-lipped character of the calyx when divested of the corolla,
but this also appears from the back view of one of the expanded

flowers.

SOSTCN

VQOMiPANL

RANG

ANEMONE VIRGINIANA.

TALL ANEMONE.—THIMBLE-WEED.

NATURAL ORDER, RANUNCULACEZ.

ANEMONE VIRGINIANA, L.—Hairy; principal involucre three-leaved, the leaves long-petioled,
three-parted; their divisions ovate-lanceolate, pointed, cut-serrate, the lateral two-parted,
the middle three-cleft; peduncles elongated, the earliest naked, the others with a two-
leaved involucel at the middle; sepals five, acute, greenish, in one variety white and
obtuse; head of fruit oval or oblong. (Gray’s AfZanual of the Botany of the Northern
United States. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's
Class-Book of Botany.) ,

iT is scarcely possible to have an Anemone brought to our
2329 notice, but the many poetical and other pleasant asso-
ciations which have been connected with it through so many
ages crowd themselves on our attention. A large volume might
be devoted wholly to the polite history of the Azemone. All we
can do in a few pages like ours is to refer to some of the most
prominent circumstances that have been connected with the
family. Few would believe that any of the. pretty species which
form the genus, and which have had so many pleasant stories
founded on their innocent-looking little flowers, ever were in ill-
favor with mankind; and yet the ancient inhabitants of Eastern
Europe believed that the wind was poisoned by passing over a
field of Azemones, and that severe maladies followed those who
had to breathe in this poisoned atmosphere; and this belief
exists among the common people of those lands even down to
our time. For this reason the Persians have taken an Anemone
to be the emblem of sickness, yet few of those who write of the
“language of flowers” know how the association originated.

The Romans appear to have had some such an idea, but believed
(93)

94 ANEMONE VIRGINIANA. —THIMBLE-WEED.

they had the power to propitiate the evil spirit ruling the
Anemone. Hence, the first Anemones of the year were eagerly
looked for, and were gathered with spell-words and ceremonies,
and after such propitiations the flower was supposed to be a
special safeguard against malarious diseases and pestilences.

However, almost, if not all, that appears in either ancient or
modern history of the Avemone, refers to some early spring
flowering kind; while the one we now have before us is rather
the child of summer, for it commences to bloom in June, and
continues till August.

An anonymous poet tells us that,

“ Thickly strewn in woodland bowers,
Anemones their Stars unfold.”

But again, in situation as in blooming time, this does not refer
to our present species, for it does not bloom in shaded places,
but along fences and the borders of woods where it can receive
the protection of some dry leaves for its roots during the winter
season, and yet have the advantage of the full sunlight for its
leaves and flowers. To those who admire floral nature, it
seldom appears as a very remarkable element in the beauty
of the scene, for it lacks the gay colors which usually attract
us. Indeed it seems litthe more than an ordinary coarse
weed, Yet few go out to collect wild flowers in the places where
this may be found without having it among their trophies, and
this alone shows that there is something about it worthy of
thought, if not of admiration. And there is, indeed; for some
very valuable botanical lessons may be derived from it.

In many Anemones the leaves on the stems have been so
altered, that they scarcely look like leaves. In some instances
they are drawn so close to the flower that, in their altered
condition, they appear like parts of the inflorescence and are
regarded as involucres, which may be considered a part of the
floral envelope, a grade lower than a calyx. So much changed
from true leaves have been the involucres of many of the

ANEMONE VIRGINIANA, —THIMBLE-WEED. 95

European forms, that disquisitions on their real nature have been
made by distinguished botanists. In the “Journal of the Proceed-
ings of the Linnzean Society, of London,” for 1860, Mr. George
Bentham suggests that the involucre of Anemone was, originally,
but a single leaf clasping the stem; and Professor Asa Gray takes
occasion in “Silliman’s Journal,” of May, in that year, to show
from the well-developed involucral leaves of Anemone Virginiana,
here illustrated, what their real nature is.

But we may pursue our studies further in the same direction.
We may learn from our present species, how closely related all
the parts of a plant are, and see very easily how one part is
transformed from another part. We must imagine first that our
plant may have had a branching character to a much greater
extent than it possesses now. ‘The five petals may have been
leaves just as fully developed as the three “involucral”’ leaves in
our plate but for a greater arresting power of development at
that point, in which case the central portion, now stamens and
pistils, would have been extended to another flower-stem, and
there would have been five axillary buds at the base of each of
these five involucral leaves. Just this process has occurred as
we can trace in the picture; except there were but three axillary
buds there, and but three leaves. In the arrestation of the
central stem, the three axillary buds were not transformed, but
made an attempt to develop into branches, only again to be
arrested by the reproductive force. In this case the whole
growth is weakened, and we see was not powerful enough to
take more than two nodes into its rhythmic grasp, making but
two involucral leaves,—and these again so weak that no further
axial buds could be developed. We gather, therefore, that very
slight variations of the rhythmic force connected with the laws
of acceleration and retardation make all the differences in struc-
ture; and we can understand how very easily one form or
species may be evolved from another one. Indeed, we often
meet with variations in the normal growth of our present species
which want nothing but permanence to be regarded good

96 ANEMONE VIRGINIANA. —THIMBLE-WEED.

specific characters. On one occasion, the writer found a specimen
in which the central flower was stalkless, or sessile. In this case
it had but three petals, and these were protruded between the
three flower-stalks growing from the flower’s base, and which, as
we have already seen, are transformed branches from three axil-
lary buds. By this lesson we can comprehend why the middle
stalk has no leaves, or involucels, as the three laterals have. If
it were to have them, they would have to be formed of the five
leaves now used to make the sepals.

Lesquereaux tells us that in Arkansas the species is known as
“Tall Anemone,” and this indeed is a very characteristic name ;
the plant growing in many cases from two to three feet high.
Darby says in his “ Botany of the Southern States,” that in that
section of the country it is known as “ Thimble-weed,” the name
obviously derived from its almost mature head, which, in many
cases, has a very thimble-like appearance both in form and
marking.

It is found somewhat frequently in most of the eastern part
of our territory, from Canada to South Carolina, being, however,
most at home in the northern latitudes, where it has travelled
completely across the continent. The color as usually seen is
greenish ; but forms have been found with pure white flowers,
and a judicious selection might reward the florist with showy

improvements.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Upper portion of a flower-stalk, made from a Pennsyl-
vania specimen in July. 2. The central branch arrested to form a flower-stalk with its
naked peduncle. 3. Axillary branches, finally bearing each a sealer flower-stalk. ode
Axillary Jeaves, transformed to involucre and involucel. 5. Longitudinal section showing

the receptacle, with carpels attached.

2S lL Vou.L Paes

3

je

ye

Is MPANY, BOSTON

CHEILANTHES VESTITA

lath

it

CHEILANTHES VESTITA.
HAIRY LIP-FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

CHEILANTHES VESTITA, Swartz.—Fronds broadly lanceolate, like the stalks hirsute with rusty
hairs, bipinnate; pinnze triangular-ovate; pinnules oblong, obtuse, more or less incised;
the ends of the lobes reflexed to form separate herbaceous involucres. Fronds four to
eight inches long, becoming smooth above. (Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United
States. See also Wood’s Class- Book of Botany, Gray’s Flora of the Northern United States,
Eaton’s Ferns of North America, and Williamson’s ferns of Kentucky.)

;ERNS have no small part of the world allotted to them.
i] Though but a fraction of the vegetable kingdom, they

cna every portion of it with flowering plants. There is no
spot, however rocky and dry, but some ferns may be found as
well as where the soil is deep, and in damp or marshy places. In
altitudes high up among the clouds ferns exist, as well as in low
situations near the level of the sea. In the arctics and in the
tropics—there is scarcely a spot on the habitable globe wherein
the lover of plants may not expect to finda fern. The greater
part of the Ferns of the Eastern United States love the shade
of woods, or to be in rich or damp meadows; and those that
live on rocks are usually found where there is shade above them,
or cool moisture about the roots. But our present species,
Cheilanthes vesttta—the Hairy Lip-Fern—is one which grows in
the clefts of dry rocks, sometimes in exposed sunny places,
where often in the summer season it dries and curls up, and ap-
pears as if dead. In this condition it has been found by the
writer on rocks along the Schuylkill river, and in Southern
Illinois.

Most species of fern are admired for their thin. filmy fronds ;

7 (97)

98 CHEILANTHES VESTITA.—HAIRY LIP-FERN.

and delicate, graceful habit. This one has little of such charac-
teristics to commend it. Though the fronds are cut and numer-
ously divided, there is a stiffness and heaviness about the plant
unusual in so many of its ferny neighbors, This is increased by
the heavy, coarse hair covering the fronds, and from which its spe-
cific name vest?ta has been derived. There is also an additional
heaviness in the appearance from the great number of rather
large spores, which often almost cover the back of the fertile
frond. Again, the curving back of the margin of the lobes
of the frond, from the manner of which the generic name is
derived, makes the fronds look unusually thick for a graceful
fern, Still it is a species which is very much admired by fern-
lovers; and fern-culturists make very pretty specimens of it,
when the best conditions for its growth are understood.

This turning back of the edges of the leaves or fronds is one
of the peculiarities of the genus. In the time of Linnzus it
would have been regarded as a Pteris, which also has the edges
of the fronds recurved; and indeed the genus founded by Swartz
was established on a species from the Cape of Good Hope, pre-
viously known as a f¥erts. The date of this establishment is
fixed by the pteridologists as 1806; but the species here illus-
trated had been discovered by Michaux three years before, and
was referred by him to Wephrodium, a genus established by
Richard, a French botanist, a few years before, and it is described
in his works as Mephrodium fanosum. ‘When found to be more
properly belonging to the new genus Cheilanthes, it was removed
to that genus, and named Chedlanthes vestita, Some botanists
have thought that as Michaux first described it, his specific
name might at least have been preserved when it was taken to
Cheilanthes, and they call it C davosa; but Professor Eaton, in
his “Ferns of North America,” properly shows that though it is
sometimes desirable to carry on these names where changes are
made, it is not obligatory on the botanist to do so, and therefore
we must abide by Swartz’s name, Cheidanthes vestila, though
Michaux and not he was the original describer of the plant; and

CHEILANTHES VESTITA.— HAIRY LIP-FERN. 99

we thus have an illustration of a rule in botanical nomenclature,
that when a botanist discovers that a plant belongs to a different
genus from the one in which it has been placed, and has the right
to make a new name for it if it be a new genus, the adjective or
specific name belongs of right to him also.

Fora long time the Hairy Lip-fern was the only known species
of our country, but of late years several others have been dis-
covered, both in the eastern and western portions of the United
States,

This fern is very variable in its growth in different locations,
and the collector may often be inclined to look on his collections
as new species. In Mr. Williamson’s “Ferns of Kentucky” is a
cut of the prevailing form in that State which shows a much more
elongated and narrower frond than ours. On the Pacific coast
some are found witha close relation to ours, but Professor Eaton
decides these to be specifically distinct. In the sixth volume of
the “Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club” he shows particu-
larly how the C. Coofere of California differs from our present
species in the hairs being tipped with a glandular enlargement.
It would be well for those who may have the opportunity of
noticing the species described here to observe whether among
the variations to which it is known to be subjected there is in
any localities a tendency towards this peculiarity. Mr. William-
son in his “Ferns of Kentucky” notes that the hairs in our spe-
cies are flattened as seen under a microscope, a form of hair
not often found in plants.

As already stated, Ferns have a wide geographical range, some
extending to the extreme north, and others favoring the tropics;
but distinct classes incline to have their own separate centres,
and in this relation the species of the genus Chev/anthes seem to
be departures from a southern rather than a northern home.
The Hairy Lip-fern, now illustrated, is the most northern of all
that grow along the Atlantic sea-board states. Professor
Gray says in his “Manual,” that it is found in the clefts of
rocks on New York island, where it was found by Mr. W.

100 CHEILANTHES VESTITA.— HAIRY LIP-FERN,

Denslow, and from thence through New Jersey to Illinois and
southwards; and Professor Eaton in his “Ferns of North Amer-
’ adds to this “Missouri and Kansas, and southward to Caro-
lina and Georgia.” Of special locations Professor Eaton quotes
Hackensack Swamp, New Jersey, discovered by Mr. F. J. Bum-
stead, in 1865. Dr. Chapman, on the authority of Professor
Kunze, of Leipsic, gives near Augusta, Georgia; and Dr. Kunze
himself, as quoted in volume 6 of “Silliman’s Journal,’ new

. *
1ca

series, says, “it is evidently common in the southern states.”
Dr. Engelmann, in the same volume, remarks that he “had col-
lected it on the calcareous rocks about the Hot Springs of Ar-
kansas ae and Dr. Darlington says in “Flora Cestrica,” that it is
very common on rocks in Chester county, Pa. In Kentucky,
Mr. Williamson says, it is rather rare, and gives Sweet Lick
Knob, near Irvine, found by Dr. Crozier; and near the boundary
between Edmonson and Barren counties, near the Diamond
Cave, by Professor Hussey, as special locations.

Professor Eaton furnishes several synonyms under which it
has been known, but, except perhaps ddvantum vestitum of
Sprengel, there are none beyond those already noted likely to
be met with by our readers.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. A full-sized plant from a living specimen, furnished by Mr.
Jackson Dawson. 2. Enlarged views of portions of. the frond, showing the recurved lip-

like margin.

a a rrare AURA IA Nc rantcatt on

IRIS MISSOURIENSIS.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS.

NATURAL ORDER, IRIDACE.

Iris MIssourIEnsIs, Nuttall.—Floweis beardless; stalk terete, taller than the leaves, sub three-
flowered; leaves narrow, sword shaped; capsule oblong-linear; flowers two-colored.
Stem twelve to sixteen inches high, erect, filled with pith, producing about three flowers,
of which the large reflected petals are yellow, and the inner petals blue and narrow.
Germ oblong-linear. (Nuttall in an account of the plants collected by Captain Wyeth.
Fournal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. VIL, p. 38, 1841.
See also Sereno Watson’s Botany of Clarence King’s Expedition as Lris Tolmieana, and
Porter’s Hora of Colorado as Iris tenax ?)

HOUGH we aim to make our work one for the whole
people as well as for the botanist, and it might therefore
seem that all that is known of a plant’s popular as well as of its
scientific history should be included, it is not possible to do more
than make selections, or give brief notes, except in cases where
there may be many species of a genus, when from time to time
we might hope to furnish enough to make every branch of a
plant’s history tolerably complete. In regard to /77s we have
already given short sketches of its popular history, and have
related that the ancients gave its fabulous origin to Juno, in
honor of Iris, one of her waiting-maids. We may here quote the
account of this as set forth by a French writer of several hundred
years ago, Louis L. D’Auxerre, and translated into English in
1706:

“We are at a loss to know wineis /ris first had a being; some
say at Florence; others in Greece; some in England; and
others again fix her Nativity elsewhere; but it is known that she
was the Daughter of 7haumantias and Llectra ; and, inasmuch
as these Deities travell’d much, the Place of her Nativity was

102 IRIS MISSOURIENSIS. —ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS.

not certainly known. J/77s was a true Copy of her Original; she
was handsome, and had a noble Air; and somewhat else in her
Carriage that spoke her Divine Original.

“According to the good Custom of the Parents who seek noth-
ing but the Advantage of their children, Thaumantias and Electra
made it their whole care to advance their Daughter and procure
her a Station worthy of her birth; and at last, managed the
Matter so well, that Juno took her for her First Maid of Honour.

“Ziis indeed had but odd Cards to play, having to live in the
one House with Jupiter, who, as all the World knows, was a God
of an Unholy Character. But after all 77s lived there, and
remained a Model of every Virtue; for she being sprung of such
Blood as hated every Species of Dishonor, carry'd herself so
steadily, that even the Sovereign of the Gods respected her.

“Juno, prepossess’d with an opinion of the Girl’s Discretion,
bestowed upon her, besides the place she had, the Office of receiv-
ing the Souls of dying Women, and conveying them to their
appointed Stations ; but this was not the only Favour she showed
to /ris,; for, after that /vzs had served her a little while, she
resolved that she should not only appear in Heaven, but that a
flower should grow upon the Earth that should bear her Name,
_ and be deck’d in imitation of her, with divers Colours.

“Tn pursuance of this Resolution, the Goddess took a certain
Liquor, in which /rzs blowed three times; then shaking it again
and again in a little Vessel, she gave it to her Waiting-Maid,
who, after applying it fora Moment to her Mouth, pour’d it upon
the Earth, where, as soon as it fell, up started a Flower, that has
ever since gone by the Name of /77zs.”

Most /rises of the United States are found at low elevations
and in damp situations; some few at elevations of one or two
thousand feet; but the present species, /rzs Alissouriensis,
grows in places high above the level of the sea and in districts
where rain seldom falls. The following, from Longfellow’s
“Evangeline,” exactly describes the location wherein our plant

is found—

IRIS MISSOURIENSIS.— ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS. 103

“Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains
Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits,
Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway,
Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant’s wagon,
Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee
Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains,
Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska;
And to the South, from Fontaine-qui-bouille and the Spanish Sierras,
Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert.”

As it is the only species of /rzs found there, the common name
of “Rocky Mountain Iris” has suggested itself to us. It was
first discovered by Captain Wyeth on the return from his cele-
brated expedition to the Pacific coast which left St. Louis in
March, 1834. Mr. Nuttall says Captain Wyeth found it “near
the sources of the Missouri on July gth,” and the specimen which
he gathered, and from which Nuttall made his description, is
preserved in the Herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia. The plant, from which our drawing was made,
was raised from seed gathered by the writer of this, in 1871,
from nearly the same location on a level dry plain at an eleva-
tion of about 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. Professor
Porter notes that it has also been collected in Colorado by Dr.
Smith, Brandegee, and Hall and Harbour, and again the writer col-
lected it in the Veta Pass in Southern Colorado, in 1878, so that
it may be looked for by those collecting in various parts of this
interesting region. The knowledge of Nuttall’s plant was lim-
ited, and hence the specimens, found by other collectors from
this point west to Oregon, were not properly identified with it,
and the species has been re-named by other authors. Herbert,
in the “ Botany of Beechey’s Voyage,” describes it as /. Zolmze-
ana, and as such it is referred to in Watson’s “ Botany of King’s
Expedition.” Mr, Watson, after examining the specimens in the
Philadelphia Academy, decides this to be the same as Nuttall’s
original species. This discovery gives our Rocky Mountain
plant a wider geographical range. As /. Tolmieana Mr. Watson
records it “on the Willamette, Oregon; Northern California ;
Ruby Valley, Nevada. Rather frequent on the. Pah-Ute to the
East Humboldt Mountains, Nevada, 6,000 feet altitude.”

104 IRIS MISSOURIENSIS. —ROCKY MOUNTAIN IRIS,

While sending our specimens to Mr. Watson, the drawing
was also forwarded, of which he kindly says: “The leaves should
be narrower (they are usually two to three lines broad—rarely
more) and a paler glaucous green. It should show a pair of
closely approximate bracts, acuminate, and differing from those
of our other allied species in being thin, pale and scariously mar-
gined, becoming wholly scarious. The petals (standards as
Baker calls them) should be erect to the tips or nearly so. The
flower of /ris is avery difficult thing to figure if you wish to give
more than a general idea of it, and very few of them in the
books are really satisfactory botanically. This of yours is on the
whole as good as could be expected, with the one exception
noted.”

Our plant had but the one scape, and the endeavor to give the
manner in which the second bud pushes from one side of the
bracts prevented the showing of the double character. But to
correct the deficiency noted by Mr. Watson, we have since
added from a dried scape (Fig. 5), showing the two bracts
referred to at B. In regard to the width of the leaves and tint,
we may say that they are faithful representations of nature at the
time the drawing was made; but the root-stock as seen in our
picture is very strong and vigorous. No leaves are wider than
those represented, most are longer and slenderer, as suggested
by Mr. Watson. As seen in our plate, the flowers appear
sessile; but as they mature, as the writer has seen them in their
native places of growth, only one fruit seems to come to perfec-
tion, and that one is on a pedicel of perhaps two inches long.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Rootestock of last year. 2. Terminal growth of root-stock

of preceding year. 3. Suab-terminal bud of last year, bearing the flower of the present sea-
8
son. 4. Scape, showing the bursting of the second flower from the bracts. 5. The scape

at maturity not having perfected seed, but showing at B the two distinct bracts.

SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA.

ELM-LEAVED GOLDEN-ROD.

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITE.

SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA, Muhlenberg.—Stem srnooth, the branches hairy; leaves thin, elliptical-
ovate or oblong-lanceolate, pointed, tapering to the base, loosely veined, beset with soft
hairs beneath; racemes panicled, recurved-spreading ; scales of the involucre lanceolate-

oblong ; rays about four. (Gray’s A/anzal of the Botany of the Northern United States.
See also Chapman’s /lora of the Southern United States, and Wood’s Class- Book of
Botany.)

O work professing to give a general view of the native
p g

flowers of the United States would do justice to its
srofessiaas unless it had something to say of the Golden-rods,
for they are among the most distinguished of American flowers.
Everybody who knows anything of our wild scenery knows the
Golden-rod; and no picture or description of an American
autumn landscape would be complete without the Golden-rod as
an essential part thereof. Our polite literature is full of
allusions to this flower: the best remembered being perhaps
that by Bryant in his “ Death of the Flowers ”—

“The Wind flower and the Violet, they perished long ago,
And the Briar-rose and the Orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the Golden-rod, and the Aster in the wood,
And the yellow Sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plegue on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade and glen.”

Our country is famous for the fading tints of its autumn foli-
age; but the rich yellow flowers of the Golden-rod mixing with
the falling leaves do much towards the reputation for unsur-
passed beauty which American autumn scenery enjoys. There
are nearly fifty different species in the genus, and with one or

106 SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA.—ELM-LEAVED GOLDEN-ROD.

two yellowish-white exceptions are all of them yellow; but they
vary very much in habit and in the arrangement of the flowers,
so that though the Golden-rods are everywhere in our autumn
fields and forests, there seems to be an unending variation in the
effect they produce; and the impression to the novice in their
study is that there are even a greater number of species among
them than is actually the case.

Though so numerous in America, they are represented also in
Europe, but only by a single species—the Solidago Virga-aurea
—long known to the people of the Old World as the “ Golden-
rod,’ a name which has come with the emigrant to the New
World, and has thus been given to the whole family, though few
of them have that virgate or rod-like character which suggested
the name for the original species. An old herbalist tells us “it
is called in Latin Virga aurea, because the Stalks, being reddish,
make the bushy tips of the Flowers seem as if they were of a
Gold-yellow, and in English it is called Golden-rod.” It is how-
ever interesting to note that though there is only one species
indigenous to Europe, that one species, Solidago Virga-aurea, is
also a true native of the northern regions of our own continent.
Another interesting fact in their geographical relationship is that
notwithstanding their great number—nearly half a hundred spe-
cies—in the Atlantic portion of the United States, they almost
disappear as they approach the Pacific Ocean, only seven spe-
cies being described in Brewer and Watson’s “ Botany of Cali-
fornia.”

To show how rapidly our knowledge of the Golden-rods pro-
gressed, it may noted that in a copy of Gronovius’ “Flora Vir-
ginica” before us, issued in 1762, there are but three species
described. Muhlenberg in his catalogue (1813) enumerates
forty-three, and for the whole of North America, Nuttall notes
but forty-nine in 1818; while now before us is a copy of Wood’s
« Class-Book,” in which are described forty-eight east of the
Mississippi alone. Some of these indeed may be regarded in
time as mere varieties of others, for in these days, as our know-

SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA.—ELM-LEAVED GOLDEN-ROD. 107

Iedve of variation increases, the tendency of the best botanists is
to unite forms rather than to name new species for every little
shade of difference. The herbalist, to whom we have already
referred, gives a figure of what he calls the “Golden-rod with
dented leaves,’ and then refers to the “American Golden-rod,”
of which he says: “This Plant is so like to the other, that the Fig-
ure of that may very well serve for this without any considerable
Error;”’ and though this expression may excite a smile from the
accurate botanist of the present day, it must be confessed that
the tendency in the past was too much in the way of making
distinct species, or at least of giving distinct names to every
slight deviation from an assumed typical form. Even of our
present species, Solidago ulmifolia, Dr. Gray says in the “ Man-
ual,” “too near Solidago altissima, distinguished only by its
smooth stem and the larger leaves.”

It may be here noted that the name a/z7/folia, meaning having
leaves like an C7mus or Elm, is calculated to mislead, for the
leaf has no great resemblance to that of an Elm. Willdenow,
under botanical rules which call for a description and name,
should properly be credited with this one, as he first published
a description of it, though he gives credit to Muhlenberg as
having sent him the name. It appears however that Muhlen-
berg sent out to others a different species under this designation,
and it is probable, from the unlikeness of this to an Elm, that it
was not the one originally intended to bear the name; but as
names are intended to be “only names,” this is now of little
consequence, except as a matter of history.

The name of the genus Solidago is usually referred to Lin-
nzus, though he credits it to Vaillant, one of the great botanists
of the generation which immediately preceded his. It is said to
have been derived from sofdius, a Latin word meaning making
whole or solid, and to be given to the “virga-aurea,” from its
medical reputation. Salmon, the herbalist of the beginning of the
seventeenth century, says: “It is one of the most noble Wound-
Herbs; cures Wounds and Ulcers.” It also appears to have

108 SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA.—ELM-LEAVED GOLDEN-ROD.

been quite famous as a dye. Another of the old herbalists,
Culpeper, says: “ Venus rules this herb. It is a balsamic vulner-
ary herb, long famous against inward hurts and bruises. No
preparation is better than a tea of this herb for this service; and
the young leaves, green or dry, have the most Virtue.” Lin-
neus admits it into his “Materia Medica” as a vulnerary and
diuretic. It is among the most remarkable of medical facts, that
a plant, which was once so famous as to elicit such strong com-
mendation, and to have a name given to it in connection with
this reputation, should now be wholly discarded from medical
practice.

Our species, S. wdnzfora, has little to call especial attention to
beyond what it might share with other species of the genus. It
is one of the most common kinds in Eastern Pennsylvania
where the plant illustrated grew. Its most striking character-
istic is perhaps its large, open, branching stalks. Most of the
familiar species of this region have their flowers in dense heads
terminating the main flower stem; but this one begins to throw
out slender branchlets, such as the one illustrated, low down on
the stem; and there are many scores of these twiggy dividing
branchlets in the make-up of the complete flower stalk. One of
these main stems, often two feet high, covered with expanded
flowers, is very showy indeed. It loves to grow in half-shaded
woods, or in rather low, open places. In such situations it is
often met with in most of the States from Alabama northwards.

EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.—1. Upper portion of a main flowering stem. 2. Lower portion
of the same. 3. Enlarged disk floret. 4. A small branchlet.

SICYOS ANGULATUS.

1

PRANG & COMPANY, Boson.

PratEe 27

SICYOS ANGULATUS.
STAR-CUCUMBER.

NATURAL ORDER, CUCURBITACE.E,

SICYOs ANGULATUS, Linnzeus.—Stem branching, hairy; leaves roundish, cordate, with an
obtuse sinus, five-angled or five-lobed, lobes acuminate, denticulate, female flower much
smaller than the male. A weak climbing vine, with long, spiral, branching tendrils.
Leaves three to four inches broad, alternate, on long stalks. Flowers whitish, marked with
green lines, the barren in long pedunculate racemes, Fruit six lines long, ovate, spinous,
eight to ten together in a crowded cluster, each with one large seed. (Wood’s Class- Book
of Botany. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States and
Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States.)

(HE true artist has a great regard for nature when she

28 pays her respects to him attired in gayly colored rai-
ment, and when we handed this plainly dressed individual to
Mr. Lunzer, a shade of disappointment clouded his brow. It
seemed as if he would like to say, “What can I make of a
uniform tint of green?” But we shall be much mistaken if
most of those who examine our plate do not pronounce it one
of the most beautiful pictures any of our wild flowers have so
far afforded us. It is, indeed, extremely rare that so many
elements of beauty are combined in one subject, and especially
when the great advantage of brilliant colors is wholly wanting.
A considerable amount of strength is expressed in the leaves
and in the stems, yet the stem is not so very strong but its
gentle curve as it narrows towards the apex harmonizes with
elegance. The lower portion of the stem is straight, and this is
in excellent harmony with the straight peduncle, straight mid-
veins and angles of the leaves; and yet these alone would have
a very stiff appearance but for the timely relief afforded by the
(109)

IIo SICYOS ANGULATUS. — STAR-CUCUMBER.

slight rounding of the base of the leaf-blade, and the general
circular outline formed by the mass of little “pepos,’ as some
authors call the fruits of some of these Cucurbitaceous plants.
As the branch departs from its heaviness with its growth, and
presents a pleasing curve, its elegance is increased by the
slender tendrils gracefully twisting, and gently decreasing the
diameter of their spiral coils till they terminate in a fine silk-
like thread. Indeed, for a gradual blending of straight lines
with curves, of heaviness with lightness, and of strength with
elegance, this illustration of the “star-cucumber” can scarcely
be surpassed, and will afford an interesting lesson to those to
whom beauty is a science.

Then there are a few points worth noting by those who are
interested in the literary history of plants. Our subject seems
to have been known to some of the earlier botanists, and Tourne-
fort, the predecessor of Linnzeus in the work of botanical reform,
placed it in the genus Szcoyordes—meaning, like the cucumber—
sicyos (or sycios, according to Nuttall and others) being
“cucumber” to the ancient Greeks. Linnzus established a
rule that no adjective terminations should be allowed in generic
names, and hence the last part was cut off, leaving Szcyos only.
The explanation may be of service, as when the student is simply
told that the name “is the ancient name of the cucumber,” he
would be led to wonder what relation our plant bore to the
cucumber of the olden time. Tournefort, in naming it S7coyordes,
had doubtless nothing more in his mind than the great resem-
blance which the leaves, stems, and tendrils bore to the common
cucumber, a resemblance which is certainly very close. It is not
quite clear what was the real cucumber of the ancients. The
“lodge, in a garden of cucumbers,” of Isaiah and other scrip-
tural references, are believed to relate rather to some kind of
melon than to our modern cucumber.

Passing from the foliage to the fruit we find very little here to
remind us of its common family name. Instead of a large number
of seeds in a succulent capsule, each little flower results in a single

SICYOS ANGULATUS. —STAR-CUCUMBER. Ill

seed, surrounded, finally, by a thin, dry covering. Each of the
little “cucumbers” we see in our cluster is indeed nearly all
seed. It is from the somewhat stellate appearance of this
cluster of seed vessels that the common name of star-cucumber
is derived. It is sometimes called “single-seeded cucumber,” for
reasons already made obvious. Aiton says it is commonly called
“Cho-cho vine;’

’

but this is probably an error, the name
belonging to the Sechium edule, a plant of the same natural
order growing in the West Indies.

One of the most remarkable incidents in the life of the star-
cucumber is its amazing growth under favorable circumstances.
Dr. John M. Coulter, at page 72 of first volume of the “ Botanical
Gazette,” speaking of the Lower Wabash, in Indiana, says:
“These low rich bottoms have yielded such monsters in growth,
especially among the climbers, that one is reminded of a South
American jungle,” and among these climbers refers especially to
the “ single-seeded cucumber, Szevos angulatus, matting all bushes
and vegetation within ten feet of its root into a thicket, or
climbing up a neighboring tree to the distance of sixty-three
feet”

Dr. Darlington, in his “Flora Cestrica,” notes that “this
cucumber-like vine has found its way into some gardens, where
it is something of a nuisance, and rather difficult to be got rid
of,” though the amiable old botanist did not seem to have a
heart to include it among the farm evils in his “Agricultural
Botany.” But Dr. Michener, in his “ Manual of Weeds,” has less
tenderness for the beautiful vine. He says it is “an unwelcome
vagrant from the gardens, which requires to be closely watched,
wherever it may occur.” The writer of this has often watched
‘it, but not as an “unwelcome vagrant,” or as a vagrant in any
case. It loves to grow about old wood-piles, or in any place
where there is an abundance of decaying vegetable matter; and
it often does loving service in covering up the remains of old
carts or farm implements that are too often left in most unsightly
conditions about farm buildings. It is indeed pleasant to watch

T12 SICYOS ANGULATUS, —-STAR-CUCUMBER.

it under these circumstances and note how rapidly it grows, and
transforms what was unpleasant into a picturesque and often
beautiful scene. The rapidity of its growth already referred to
will always make it a subject of interesting study. The plant
from which our illustration was taken sprouted from a seed in
May, and before frost had rambled over bushes some thirty feet
away. It had many hundreds of branches. An estimate was
formed of their number, and it was found that if these branches
were placed end to end they would make a line of two thousand
feet! Many of the lower leaves die as the growth progresses,
but the calculation gave about one hundred square feet of leaf-
surface on the vine at one time, from which an immense amount
of moisture must be exhaled during the twenty-four hours. The
stem at the ground is no thicker than a lead-pencil, and the
reader can imagine how rapid must be the flow of water through
this narrow stem in order to supply the enormous exhalation.
We look with wonder on the mammoth tree of California and
similar vegetable productions,—but not less wonderful are the
facts of plant-growth everywhere about us, and in few things are
they more strikingly illustrated than in the growth of the star-
cucumber.

It grows in most of the states east of the Rocky Mountains,
except the extreme northeast and northwest portions.

ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES

L, PRANG & COMPANY, 30ST =

1 & COMBAN

ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.
SCOTT’S SPLEENWORT.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES,

ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES, R. R. Scott.—Fronds evergreen. Barren fronds spreading, four to six
inches long, lanceolate, pinnate at the base, pinnatifid towards the apex, tapering into a
slender prolongation ; apex rooting; rachis black. Fertile fronds eight to ten inches long,
nearly upright, pinnate at the base; pinnules of unequal Jength, an inch or more long,
linear lanceolate; frond tapering into a slender prolongation which is sinuous and prolif-
erous, mid-rib permanent to the apex; fronds more membranaceous than Asplenium pin-
natifidum, which, with the black rachis, distinguishes it from that species. (R. Robinson
Scott, in Gardener’s Monthly for September, 1865. See also Gray’s Manual of the
Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s £lora of the Southern United States,
and Eatou’s Ferzs of North America.)

HHS interesting fern has a remarkable history. A single
fyi] plant was discovered in 1862, eight miles from Phila-
delphia, on the west bank of the Schuylkill, by Robert Robinson
Scott, then gardener to Mr. Kennedy, of Port Kennedy. Mr.
Scott was no ordinary man. He was related to some of the
wealthiest families of Belfast, in Ireland, where he was born
and received an excellent education. He was a proficient in
most of the ancient and many of the modern languages, and.
early developed a taste for natural history, and especially for
Botany. He went through a course of study in the Botanic
Garden of Glasnevin, and subsequently in the Royal Gardens at
Kew. His father had a passionate love for his native land which
the son inherited, and their course in this respect estranged them
from their relations, and finally reduced them to absolute poverty.
It was particularly a trait in the young botanist’s character that
he would sacrifice on the instant every prospect of usefulness in

his chosen scientific career, for his ideal of liberty and freedom,
(113)

Ti4 ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.— SCOT1’S SPLEENWOKT.

Thus it became impossible for his scientific friends to aid him to
any great extent, though conscious of his eminent talents. His
botanical acuteness enabled him easily to place any unknown
plant from any part of the world in its systematic relationships,
and in a remarkabuy snort time to discover its proper name and
history. Had he retained his proper faculties he might have
become a prince in Botany. He came to America in 1848, taking
up with the horticultural profession for a living. In 1867-8, his
mind gave way, and he died a few years ago in the State lunatic
asylum at Harrisburg.

It is no wonder that so acute an observer should have detected
a new species in this solitary plant. But it was strange that he
could find no leading botanist in America, to whom he sub-
niutted specimens, to agree with him, or give him the slightest
encouragement in his researches—as he thought, because he was
but “a poor gardener.” Satisfied, however, that it was new, he
described it himself with an illustration in the magazine above
cited, but still no notice was taken of it in our own land. He
then thought he would try the European botanists, and in 1866,
one year after his own description, the Rev. M. G. Berkeley
noticed it in “the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of
London” in July of that year as “probably a hybrid,” but
retaining Mr. Scott’s name. This little piece of history has its
valuable lesson. It teaches the student to search carefully for
facts; and when he, himself, is sure of the facts, not to be too
easily disheartened because others do not at once see things as
he does.

Since Mr. Scott found his single plant, several others have
been found in the same vicinity by Mr. Bourquin, a botanist of
Camden, New Jersey; by Miss Julia S. Tutwiler, of Greene
Springs, near the Black Warrior river; and by W. H. Leggett, at
Canaan in Connecticut. Mr. John Williamson, in his “ Ferns of
Kentucky,” published in 1878, remarks: “We have in Kentucky
all the Aspleniums found in the Northern United States, except
the somewhat doubtful +1. cbenordes,’—but before the sheets of

ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.—SCOTT’S SPLEENWORT. 115

his little work were scarcely from the press it was found, in
July of that year, in Franklin county, in that State, by Professor
R. W. Wildberger. It is, therefore, probable from these several
recent discoveries in widely separated localities that it will yet
be found in many other places, and the probability will give
increased interest to fern explorations.

Miss Julia Tutwiler finds the plant in considerable quantity in
her location, and, in a letter dated April 15th, 1879, to the writer
of this, she thus describes her experience with it: “Our resi-
dence in Alabama is in latitude 32° 47’ north, longitude 87° 45’
west, eight miles from the Black Warrior river. The black-
lands, or cotton-lands, formerly prairies, covered with cane and
with cedar-hummocks near there, lie about fifteen miles south of
us. Where we reside the soil is either red clay, or a mixture of
sand and gravel, except in the creek and river bottoms. The
face of the country is rolling, covered with hills from one hun-
dred to two hundred feet above the level of the sea. We find
no stones here except conglomerate, or ‘pudding-stone,’ as it is
familiarly called. The geologists say the whole formation here
belongs to the tertiary. I was agreeably surprised some years
ago to find some miles away from our home, in a deep glade
formed by the gradual work of a little brook which now runs
through it, several plants which I have never found around our
home, though I know these woods quite well. One of these
was the <Asfplenium cbcnoides, which then seemed to me so
peculiar that I sent a piece to a botanical paper, and learned
from the editor that it had been found in only one place in the
United States before. The Virginian saxifrage, the Walking-
fern, and several others quite common in the north, are here, but
only in this deep shaded glen with the Asplentum ebenoides.”

An interesting question in connection is conveyed in Mr.
Williamson’s expression, “somewhat doubtful species.” Dr.
Berkeley, above cited, thought it a probable hybrid, but appar-
ently only because a single plant was found growing with Camplo-
sorus—the “Walking-fern,” and Asplentum ebencum. Miss Tut-

116 ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.—SCOTT’S SPLEENWORT.

wiler does not mention the latter species, which probably also
grows near the Alabama location; but the association need sug-
gest hybridity no more than in the case of others also often found
associated. Again, those who have experimented with them, tell
us it is extremely difficult to produce hybrid ferns. When
germination of the spore takes place, a small green blade called
the prothallus is formed. On the surface of this little cups appear,
which represent the different sexes in flowering plants, and the
fertilizing dust, or pollen, as we should say in flowering plants, is
ejected from the one class, and has to fall into the other. The
chances of the fertile vesicle, or, as it is technically called, the
archegonium, receiving fertility from any other source than its
own prothallus, are found to be very slim indeed. Asa means
to make it more probable, hybridists sow the spores of two
species in immense abundance thickly together, so that when the
prothallia develop they may be pushed up on edge, and in that
way the antherozoids or “pollen” be more likely to be thrown
into the receptive vesicles of the other species. One experi-
menter reports that of millions of plants so favorably raised for
hybridization, he yet never saw but two undoubted hybrids. With
this difficulty it is scarcely within the probabilities that a hybrid
between the Walking and the Ebony ferns should appear in so
many different and such widely separated locations.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—t. Plant of natural size from Miss Tutwiler’s location. 1.
2. 3. Various enlarged sections of pinnules from different parts of the plant,—showing
variations in the venation.

COMMELYNA VIRGINICA.
COMMON DAY-FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, COMMELYNACEE.

CoOMMELYNA VirGINICcA, Linnzus.—Stems usually decumbent; leaves lanceolate, acute, or
acuminate, contracted at base into sheathing membraneous petioles ; peduncles mostly two
within the bract,—one usually more slender; rather erect, longer and one-flowered, or
sterile,—the other commonly three-flowered ; odd petal colorless, ovate lanceolate, about as
long as the lateral sepals. Plant nearly glabrous. Stem about a foot long (three or four
feet when supported in hedges) terete. Leaves two to four or five inches long, and half
an inch to an inch wide; sheathing petioles about half an inch long, striate with green
nerves, pubescent along the margins. Peduncles half an inch to an inch in length, in-
closed in the recurved conduplicate bract, both before and after flowering. (Darlington’s
flora Cestrica, under the name of Commelyna angustifolia? See also Gray’s Manual
wW the Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United
States, and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.)

AREEN, an English writer on gardening, in the early part

of the present century, tells us that “Commelinas have
bite little beauty, so that, after the seeds come up, two or three of
each sort is all that are worth retaining ;” but it must be remem-
bered that in the days when this judgment was given few plants
except those with large or highly-colored flowers were thought
beautiful. The more nearly a Rose resembled a cabbage in form
and size, the more it was esteemed,—and possibly a large red
Peony would have been considered the acme of perfection. But
the science of beauty has progressed as well as other sciences, and
now few of its students would take our plate and study it in the
light of its teaching and not pronounce it beautiful. Of course it
is not gay; but in the gracefulness of its lines, the harmony of its
proportions, the contrasts of its quantities, and the great variety
of its special features, there are few plants richer in the elements
of the beautiful. But to see it in its rare perfection, we must

118 COMMELYNA VIRGINICA.—-COMMON DAY-FLOWER.

visit it in its native places, and study it in connection with all its
surroundings. In these situations it often gives a charm to the
aspects of nature that is almost indescribable. One such spot on
the Wissahickon near Philadelphia is now in the writers’ mind,
fresh and vivid, though it is years since the picture was painted
there. The narrow path had been worn so deep by the rains of
ages that a bank of many feet high lined its sides. Naked rocks
projected from the banks here and there; and ferns, grasses, and
flowering plants lovingly strove to cover them. At the top were
Red Maples, Dogwoods, and Hornbeams, which made a partial
shade, but did not wholly screen the sun from the earth at the
base of the bank, where, and by the path’s side, the little “day-
flower” struggled up,—now rooting in the ground to hold itself—
now hanging its branches from the rocks,—gaining continually in
its struggle upwards, but growing so luxuriantly and seeming
so happy in its gains! Day by day, the little blue flowers came
out to cheer and encourage the plant in its work,—just opeaing,
smiling approvingly, and then sinking at once to rest.
“The dew stole up
From the fresh daughters of the earth, and heat

Came like a sleep upon the delicate leaves,
And bent them with the blossoms to their dreams,”

as in the days when, according to Willis, Abraham went forth to
make his fearful sacrifice. In the morning, before the dew has
wholly stolen away, and in the months of July and August, is the
time to see it at its best. Then the blue flowers are most numer-
ous. Sometimes as much as one-fourth of the whole green bed
of foliage is bedecked with the ccerulean blue,

But the child of science will find abundant interest in it inde-
pendently of the beauty it affords. In our description we have
adopted Dr. Darlington’s sketch, because it agrees so remarkably
with our drawing, which is also from a Pennsylvanian plant, though
he has not described it under its present name. Dr. Darling-
ton says: “I have specimens from the South of C. axgustifoha,
with really narrow lance-linear leaves; yet ours with its lanceolate

COMMELYNA VIRGINICA.—COMMON DAY-FLOWER. 119

leaves seems to be referred to the same species. Three of the
anthers are comparatively abortive and cross-shaped,—and a
fourth one is partially so modified, or in process of metamorphosis
to that state ;”’ but it is now conceded that the species is variable,
and that C. angustifolia of Michaux is the same as C. Virginica
of Linnzus. Elliott, an early botanist, named another form C
erecta, and this is also referred to our present species,—the C.
erecta of Linnzeus being another and distinct one. What with
variations and synonyms, the student may have some trouble in
identifying his collections. It is only in quite recent times that
botanists themselves seem to have agreed on the identities of
these variations,—and if the student is not one inclined to believe
that facts accurately told are just as well at least as those
inaccurately given, and is satisfied to be “not wise beyond what
is written,” he will have some trouble in reconciling some of the
statements connected with its family history. Dr. Gray, in his
“Manual,” gives Dillenius as the author of the name Commelyna,
“dedicated to the early Dutch botanists, J. and G. Commelyn,’—
but in his “School Botany” he tells us that Linnzeus named the
genus for more than two of them. “There were three Com-
melyns, Dutch botanists; two of them were authors, the other
published nothing. In naming this genus for them, Linnzus is
understood to have designated the two former by the full-
developed petals, the latter by the smaller or abortive petal.”
Linnzeus, however, in his Genera Plantarum, credits Plumier with
the authorship of the name, who published a work on American
plants in 1703, while Dillenius, who was Professor of Botany
in the University of Oxford, issued his “ Hortus Elthamensis”
in 1732,—and Milne, in his “Dictionary” of 1770, states
that “Plumier named this genus Commelina, from John Com-
melin, a Dutchman, Professor of Botany at Amsterdam, and
author of two botanical works, entitled, Hesperides Belgie and
flortus Amstelodamensis.” All the old botanists gave the ortho-
graphy as Commelina, modern botanists always use Commelyna.
Dr. Gray adopts the latter in his “ Manual ;” but in his “ School

120 COMMELYNA VIRGINICA.— COMMON DAY-FLOWER.

Botany” he has it Commelyina—the latter doubtless an oversight,
but a curious one as though intended to combine both forms.
The student may learn from this little sketch of the family name
that it requires great care in history to avoid error, and that it
is always well not to take even the most careful authorities
in final judgment when any opportunity offers for review.

Commelyna has been taken as the type of the natural order
Commelynacee, the only other genus of the order in our country
being 7radescantia, and these are particularly interesting through
being the most northern representatives of the order. It is not
a very extensive family, there being not more than two dozen
good genera in the whole; but of these the chief are inhabitants
of the East and West Indies. The order is also well represented
in Africa. It is one of great interest to botanists, as being an
advance from simpler organisms towards true Lilies. There is,
however, 2 distinct calyx and corolla, while in the six parted peri-
anth of the true Lily these distinctions are nearly abolished.
From its neighbor 7yadescantia it is readily distinguished by its
irregular corolla, In the latter the petals are of one uniform
size, and set at regular distances from one another.

The roots of our common day-flower make a nutritious vege-
table when cooked, but it is not in use because other vegetables
of a similar character successfully compete with it.

It is found along the eastern seaboard States from Florida to
New York, thence westwardly to Michigan, and southwardly east
of the Mississippi river.

NYMPHAEA FLAVA.
AUDUBON'S YELLOW WATER-LILY.
NATURAL ORDER, NYMPHACES.

NyMPu-£A FLAVA, Leitner.—Root-stock erect. Leaves ovate-orbicular, spotted, lobes sharp-
pointed. Flowers, yellow. (Mrs. Mary Treat, in Harger’s Magazine, vol. 55, p. 365.)

41N Thomas Moore's delicious poem, Lalla Rookh, he tells

us of

“ Those virgin lilies all the night
Bathing their beauties in the lake,
That they may rise more fresh and bright
When their beloved Sun’s awake.”

This is in allusion to the well-known fact that the flowers
of the water-lily open early in the morning about sunrise,
and close before the evening time. But if we carry the
imagery further than the poet intended, we may say of the
present species that it has been bathing its beauty in a very long
night in the Florida lakes, for only recently have we had any
certain knowledge of its existence, and this through the keen
investigations of a noted botanist, Mrs. Mary Treat, of Vine-
land, New Jersey, who gave us the first detailed account of it in
the number of “Harper’s Magazine” above cited. Botanists,
however, were made partially acquainted with it through a colored
drawing in Audubon’s “Birds of America,” published in 1843.
In his picture No, 411 he represents a swan, Cyguus Americanus,
swimming among a lot of yellow water-lilies, which he calls
“Nymphaea flava, Leitner.” This swan is an Arctic bird.
About the middle of September flocks come down from the

122 NYMPHAEA FLAVA.—AUDUBON'S YELLOW WATER-LILY.

northern seas to Hudson’s Bay, remaining till October, when
they go south to more congenial climes. Large numbers
reach the Chesapeake Bay, where they find a favorite food in the
Vallisnerta spiralis, known to sportsmen as “wild celery;” and
when the season arrives for leaving this location they then cross
the continent to the Columbia River and the shores of the
Pacific Ocean, on their way back to their Arctic home. Audubon
says they have never been seen beyond Cape Hatteras, in North
Carolina. As this water-lily has not been found in the waters
frequented by this swan, it is not surprising that botanists
regarded Audubon’s lily as a mere creation of the artist’s fancy.
Leitner, however, is said to have been a young German botanist
who collected in Florida, and was killed there by the Indians.
There, therefore, still remained the probability that Audubon
had taken a drawing of Leitner’s to assist his swan without a
thought of the geographical incongruity, and the giving of Leit-
ner’s name, Nymphea flava, supports this supposition. Mrs.
Treat’s discovery of this lily, in Florida, shows that Leitner may
have seen it there, though her plant differs from that pictured
in Audubon’s work. In this drawing the leaves are ovate-
oblong, and the lobes are rounded at the base, of a clear uniform
green without spots, and the yellow of the flowers is very light.
Mrs. Treat’s plant differs, as we see by our picture, and only the
belief that it must have been the plant intended by Leitner
entitles him to the retention of the name he gave it.

In “Harper’s Magazine,” as already cited, Mrs. Treat pro-
poses for it the name of Nymphaea lutea; but this brings to
mind that Linnzus classed what we now call Nuphar, or as it is
commonly called along the Delaware, the “splatter-dock,” with
the true Nympheas; and that one, now Nuphar-lutea, was Nym-
phea lutea then. It is true that in botany a name rejected may
be taken up again for another species, but in such a case as this
it would lead to confusion with a synonym,—an evil botanists
endeavor to avoid. It may be remarked here that there is no
great difference between Muphar and Nymphaea, except in

NYMPHEA FLAVA,—AUDUBON’S YELLOW WATER-LILY. 123

general appearance, the chief distinction being in the connection
of the seeds with the placenta, or material out of which the
seeds seem to grow. In the true Wymphea there is a fleshy
matter proceeding from the placenta between it and the seed,
called the arillus, which in Mymphea encloses the seed. In
Nuphar this is wanting. There are other differing characters
in the pistil, the stamens, and the petals, but not greater than
we often find in the sub-divisions of other genera.

Supposing the subject of our chapter to have been the same
species as Leitner saw, we may speak of it as re-discovered by
Mrs. Treat, and her account of the event is extremely interesting.

“In the valley by the river
In the bosom of the forest”

she found herself ready for a journey up the St. John’s, and she
says: “On my excursion in the row-boat I was attracted to the
nearest cove, where acres of the water were covered by a beau-
tiful variegated leaf of a strange water-lily, which bore a yellow
flower. I saw it was a Vymphea, but its manner of growth and
its whole appearance were so unlike our white water-lily, that I
knew it must be a distinct species, of which no mention was
made in the Text-Books of Gray or Chapman.” By the help of
Dr. Gray and Professor C. S. Sargent, it was identified with
Audubon’s plate. Describing its growth, Mrs. Treat says: “The
beautiful leaves lie thick upon the water; and in May, when the
flowers appear, it is one of the grandest sights] ever beheld. It
grows in water from one to five feet deep, the length of the leaf
stems and flower scapes depending on the depth of the water.
How far it extends remains to be seen, I have traced it about
forty miles along the St. John’s, and it grows all about Jackson-
ville, thirty-five miles below us. How it has so long escaped the
botanist is a mystery.” ;

But not only the lovers of nature in her popular aspects, and
as she may present them to us in forest or lake, have to thank
Mrs. Treat for this re-discovery of Audubon’s “Golden Water-

124 NYMPHA‘A’ FLAVA,— AUDUBON’S YELLOW WATER-LILY.

Lily;” the close student of plants as well as the more acute
botanist will be pleased with the study of the growth and develop-
ment of the plant itself, The “common white water-lily” has a
taick creeping rhizome or main stem,—in this species the root-
stock is erect (Fig. 3). This seems to be in the main made up
of imperfectly developed leaves, just as the scales of a true lily
bulb are formed. During the next year roots come out from
these scales, and, when they die, as they do in the following fall,
they leave each scale pitted as seen in our enlarged drawing
(Fig. 7). From some of these, however, one thready point, at
first as like a root as the rest, proceeds onward, and finally
makes a young plant capable of flowering in the autumn of the
same season (Fig. 4). From the study of this thread in its
early life we may learn how nearly allied in their nature may be
a root and the runner, as the thread is called in popular language.
This young plant has a remarkable history. It proceeds onwards
a foot or so and takes a short rest, but produces a cluster of
small tubers which make no leaves that season at least (Fig. 5),
and then proceeds with another phase of growth terminating
this time in a small plant, without the slightest trace of tubers
(Fig. 6). The exact purpose of these tubers in the economy of
the plant is not clear, and the solution yet awaits some careful
observer. It is evident that the plant could exist and perpetuate
its race without them, and probably quite as well, but as nature
rarely makes anything that is of no use to the individual, and
nothing that is wholly superfluous in the general good of the
organic world, its exact relation is worth tracing.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Leaves and flowers from plants growing under Mr.
Dawson’s care in the Arnold Arboretum. 2. The rayed stigma. 3. Upright root-stock of
the past year. 4. New plant from the old one on a thready runner about a yard iong.
5. Cluster of tubers. 6. Secondary plant of the same season,

PLATE 31.

CROOMIA PAUCIFLORA.

FEW-FLOWERED CROOMIA.

NATURAL ORDER, ROXBURGHIACEZE.

CROOMIA PAUCIFLORA, Torrey.—Perianth deeply four parted, persistent, the spreading nerve-
less oval divisions imbricated in the bud. Filaments separate, thick, erect, inserted on the
base of the perianth opposite its lobes: anthers short, oblique, with the connective short
or wanting. Ovary globose-ovate, sessile. Stigmatwo-lobed. Ovules four to six. Fruit
follicular, beak-pointed, at length two-valved. Seeds one to four, obovate, suspended
from the nerve-like, at length free placenta, nearly covered by the fibres of the cord.
Embryo minute, obovate, (Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States.)

NRAIN giving a general view of the Flora of the United States
mil we have endeavored to make the selections from as

many different natural orders or botanical groups as possible,
so as to assist the student in his botanical studies, at the same
time keeping an eye in the selections, to those which, from their
intrinsic beauty or other popular points of interest commend
themselves to the mere lover of wild flowers, or to those who
simply wish to follow in the wake of polite intelligence. But in
looking about for a representative of the natural order Rox-
burghiacee, we are deprived of all choice, as it has but the single
genus Cyooma in the United States, and this genus is repre-
sented bya single species only, Croonua pauciflora, the plant now
illustrated. Yet aside from this reason for its present introduc-
tion, and even were it objected that it has little beauty of coloring
to claim our attention, there are so many points connected with its
botanical and popular history, and so much that is particularly
instructive to the student, that it would be unjust to the aim and
objects of our work not to give it an honored place among
our “native flowers.”

(125)

126 CROOMIA PAUCIFLORA, — FEW-FLOWERED CROOMIA.

Our first knowledge of the plant came from the great botanist
Nuttall, who described it as Cissanipelos pauctflora in the
“Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.”
This genus, Crssampelos, is placed with the “ Moon-wort”’ family,
or Menispermacee, but on fresh specimens from Mr. Croom and
Dr. Chapman coming into the hands of Dr. Torrey, he decided
that it was not of that family, but belonged to the Berberries, or
Derberidaceg@, and this of course necessitated another name for
the genus, so he dedicated it to one of the above collectors,
Mr. Croom, retaining Nuttall’s specific name—Croonia pauci-
flora, or the “ few-flowered Croomia.” Our bibliographic works
refer to Torrey in “Annals of the New York Lyceum,” but the
student will be surprised to find that there is no such paper
there; and its non-appearance in that serial after being read
before the body is believed to be the result of a personal trouble,
which shows that even a model of amiability may after ali be sim-
ply a human being with weaknesses like unto ourselves. The
first description really appears to be in the “ Flora of North Amer-
ica” by Torrey and Gray, issued in 1840. It is here said of it:
“We consider this plant a reduced form of Berberidacee « it is,
however, remarkable for its persistent sepals, suspended seeds,
and in being apetalous (having a calyx but no corolla). It would
be impossible to determine from the habit of the plant whether it
were dicotyledonous or monocotyledonous ; and the embryo is
so minute that the cotyledons cannot be distinguished, but the
structure of the rhizoma is exogenous, a circle of spiral vessels
surrounding the central pith.” It is here that one of the inter-
esting facts about Croondia is developed. As most readers
know, the great divisions of the vegetable world—the monocoty-
ledons, or those plants with one seed-leaf, and the endogens, or
those which have the wood arranged without concentric circles—
are regarded as about the same thing; as also are the dicoty-
ledons, or those with two seed-leaves, and the exogens, or those
arranged with circles of wood, as in our ordinary timber trees.
But in time it was found that notwithstanding the exogenous

CROOMIA PAUCIFLORA. —FEW-FLOWERED CROOMIA. 127

stems of Croonia, the plant was really monocotyledonous, and
this necessitated again a removal to Roxburghiacee, a very
small order of Asiatics, not far removed from the Arum-like
plants. On the other hand, it is extremely interesting to note
that the AZenispermaceous plants, with which our Croomza was at
first associated, though certainly dicotyledonous, often have endo-
genous wood, and is thus on the exact opposite side of the scale.
Yet another very interesting fact may be noted in the same con-
nection. Sachs, in his celebrated “ Text-Book of Botany,” shows
that the normal condition of A/enispermaccous plants is the tri-
merous verticil, or one formed on the plan of three, and as this is
the usual type on which endogenous plants are formed, it would
not be at all improbable that the early relationship, as suggested
by Nuttall, was not so very far away after all; and the student
will not fail to observe that though for systematic purposes the
great divisions of the vegetable kingdom have to be spoken of
as if they are divided by lines definitely drawn, they are yet so |
closely blended by nature, that there is no doubt one has grown
out of, and was once a part of the other; and it proves the unity
of plan on which are formed the many diversified features of
vegetation.

Another very remarkable fact in connection with C7vomda is
noted by Professor Asa Gray in the “American Agriculturist”’
for 1875. Some forty years previously Mr. Croom discovered in
Western Florida a kind of yew, subsequently named Zorreya
taxifolia, and underneath the trees were growing plants of the
Croomia. Now in Japan another species of Zorreya has been
discovered, and also heneath this Japan species another species
of Croomza has also been found growing; and as both the yew
and the Cvoomza are very rare, only a few localities being known
for them in this country, the companionship of the two in these
different parts of the world is among the most wonderful facts in
botanical geography. Thus, though we may not see much
beauty in the plant itself, we cannot but be interested in the
wonderful story it tells, and we may truly exclaim with Thomson,

128 CROOMIA PAUCIFLOPA.—FEW-FLOWERED CROOMIA,

“And not a beauty blows,
And not an opening blossom breathes in vain.”

Mr. H. B. Croom, in whose honor this genus was named, was
one of the most enthusiastic of Southern botanists during the
second quarter of our present century. “ Silliman’s Journal,”
during 1833, 34, and 35, contains numerous articles from his
pen, which made us acquainted for the first time with many val-
uable facts concerning Southern plants. He studied the
curious pitcher plants, or Sarracenias, particularly, and his mono-
graph of them is regarded as one of the most valuable legacies
to science. He was born in Lenoir county, North Carolina, in
1799. He was educated for the law, but gave up all for the
study of natural history. He with his wife and family were all
drowned in the wreck of the steamer “Home,” off the coast of
North Carolina, in 1837.

SERIES IL. VoL

© ccsiigeias aE Vena

ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE.

SIERRA NEVADA SHIELD-FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE, D. C. Eaton.—Root stock rather short, creeping, densely covered with
the persistent bases of the former stalks; fronds standing in a crown, one anda half to three
feet high, thin membranaceous, lanceolate in outline, pinnate; pinne sessile, linear-lance-
olate from a broad heavy base, deeply pinnatifid, the lower pairs distant and gradually
reduced to mere auricles; lobes crowded, oblong, entire or sparingly toothed, slightly
hairy on the veins beneath, and sprinkled with minute resinous particles; veins about seven
pairs to a lobe, simple or a few of the lower ones forked ; sori close to the margin; indu-
sium minute reniform, furnished with a few dark colored marginal glands, and bearing
several long straight-jointed hairs on the upper surface. (D.C. Eaton’s Ferms of North
America.)

10 the thoroughly informed and systematic botanist the

Wei} discovery of a new species is unwelcome. His herba-
rium has been arranged according to some favorite author’s plan
or according to some approved system of his own, with neat
catalogues or numbered check lists to correspond, when newly
discovered species appear and his work has generally to be gone
over again. The young botanist, however, works with very
different feeling. The discovery of a new species is a great
delight to him, and much of the zest with which unexplored
regions are searched is in the hope that they will yield the
zealous naturalist something new. California and the regions
west of the Rocky Mountains have been particularly disastrous
to those botanists who comparatively few years ago had per-
fected their systematic arrangement. This territory had much
to do with the suspension of the /Vora of North America com-
menced by our famous botanists in 1838,—but the hosts of new

plants found since that time have added the collectors’ laurels to
(129)

130 ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE.—SIERRA NEVADA SHIELD-FERN,

many a distinguished name. Amongst these are particularly
prominent those of two ladies—Mrs. Pulsifer Ames, and Mrs.
Austen—who, according to Professor Eaton, first discovered this
fern “in moist meadows and along creeks in the Sierra Nevada
of Northern California, especially in a meadow containing also
the Darlingtonia Californica (the Californian Pitcher Plant), near
Quincy, Plumas County;” and “from Berry Creek Cajion, Butte
County, by Mrs. Ames,” Professor Eaton named it from this
location, Aspidium Nevadense, and it forms plate X. of the work
referred to for the description. No date is given with the
appearance of the parts of this standard work, and it may per-
haps save disputes in the future as to the priority of names if we
here fix 1878 as the date of Professor Eaton’s description. It
will thus be seen that it is a very recent discovery; indeed all
we know of it is from the account given in Professor Eaton’s
work, and the examination of living specimens from which our
drawing was made, kindly furnished by Professor C. S. Sargent,
of Cambridge Botanical Garden. The name, however, is unfortu-
nate, as it will lead to the supposition that it is from the State of
Nevada, and even so far as the Sierra Nevada, Mountains of
California are concerned, Plumas and Butte Counties, where the
ladies found this fern, are not in the true Nevada but in the
Lassen range; and thus the name is still less pardonable than
that for the New York fern, Aspediune Noveboracense, which is by
no means a “New York” fern, as the Latin name implies.
These two species have a very close relationship to each other,
and it was no doubt this relationship which suggested to
Professor Eaton a similarly local name. One of the most strik-
ing differences from this eastern species will be noted in the
short stout root stock, while those who have taken from the
earth the “New York fern” will remember the slender cord-
like rhizome with the apex far ahead of the fully formed frond.
This slowly developing rhizome brings all the fronds together
in a tuft, and it follows that the general appearance of the grow-
ing plant is very different from that of its eastern relative.

ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE.— SIERRA NEVADA SHIELD-FERN, I31

Then the fronds are much narrower, being generally not more
than one-tenth of the length. In these and other respects
however it is prokable the species will exhibit the variations so
often found in ferns. Our plant differs in some respects from
the one illustrated by Professor Eaton. Though his description
calls for “a few of the lower veins forked,” the drawing has the
upper and lower ones in this condition. We find no tendency
to forking in the veins of our specimen. The venation or
arrangement of the veins is very pretty in this species. The
lower veinlets are nearly opposite and give a palmately branched
appearance. In most ferns the arrangement is usually alternate.
Like the “New York fern”
uous. In the specimen illustrated the barren frond has already

this species appears to be decid-

faded, and the fertile one is preparing to follow. Our specimen
is undersized to accommodate our page, and hence only a few
of the upper pinnules are fruitful.

A very interesting’ circumstance in connection with the life-
history of the species is given in Professor Eaton’s work from a
letter of Mrs. Austen. She says that the divisions of the pinnz
of the fruiting frond are closed or folded together early in the
day. In the cool of the morning they were unfit for the botan-
ical press from this peculiarity. About two or three o'clock of
the same day she found them flat and in excellent condition for
the collector's purposes. Professor Eaton remarks that Mrs.
Austen had found on subsequent occasions the same phenom-
enon, but was unable to say whether it was brought about by
alternations of “light or darkness, dampness or dryness, or heat
or cold.”

With the rapid development of our railroad system, and the
increased facilities for travelling, it will not be long before many
of our readers will be able to make the acquaintance of this
pretty fern in its natural home as well as by the aid of Mr. Lun-
zer’s admirable drawing. In the meantime they will be anxious
to cultivate it, and no doubt before long it will be offered for
sale in the catalogues of some of our enterprising fern-florists,

132 ASPIDIUM NEVADENSE.—SIERRA NEVADA SHIELD-FERN,

Mountain ferns, asa rule, are rather impatient of the summer
air of the Eastern States, or of other places at low elevations. It
is not that they object so much to the heat as to the dry air of the
long summers. Those who would succeed with it under culture
should therefore keep it in the shade near some rivulet or foun-
tain if such be convenient, or at least under the shade of a rock,
wall, or fence during the summer season; and in the close, moist
air of a fern-case during the winter. Species which grow natu-
rally on walls, rocks, or open places, do well in rooms when
fully exposed to the atmosphere, unless it be charged with
sulphurous gases.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. A rather young plant from a specimen grown at the Arnold
Arboretum. 2. Portion of a pinnale, showing the venation, sori, and the scattered
resinous dots.

Tare TT

Wie

NYMPHAEA ODORATA.

SWEET-SCENTED WATER-LILY.

NATURAL ORDER, NYMPHACE.

NyMPHA ODORATA, Aiton.—Leaves orbicular, cordate-cleft at the base to the petiole, five to
nine inches wide, the margin entire; stipules broadly triangular or almost kidney-
shaped, notched at the apex, appressed to the root-stock; flowers white, very sweet-
scented, cften as much as five and a half inches in diameter when fully expanded,
opening early in the morning, closing in the afternoon; petals obtuse; axil much longer
than the distinctly stipitate oblong seeds. (Gray’s AZanual of Botany of the Northern
United States. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood’s
Class-Book of Botany.)

NGIEW flowers have excited the enthusiasm of the poets as
S ye much as the common lily; but among these few our
pure white water-lilies must be ranked, and indeed the senti-
ments born of the one are often identical with those incited by
the other.

Bryant, in his beautiful poem of the “Child and the Lily,”

exclaims:

“Innocent child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour;
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.” $

And though it is probable that the poet had the white eastern
lily in view, the sentiment is just as applicable to our sweet
water-lily; a flower which the emblematists have dedicated to
purity. Joaquin Miller expresses just the same idea, when

he says:
«“ The lily on the water sleeping,
Enwreathed with pearl, and ’bossed with gold,
An emblem is, my love, of thee.”

(133)

134 NYMPHAEA ODORATA, —SWEET-SCENTED WATER-LILY.

The “Sleeping Beauty,” as suggested by the water-lily to
Miller, seems to have occurred also to Oliver Wendel Holmes,
who says of it, in his “Star and the Water-Lily :”

“ What is the lily dreaming of ?
Why crisp the waters blue ?
See, see, she is lifting her varnished lid }
Her white leaves are glistening through.”

In their descriptions of lake and river scenery, the poets make
frequent and good use of the water-lily. Shelley writes of

«6 floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak which overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light.”

And in Longfellow’s “ Evangeline,” we are told that

“ Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations
Made by the passing oars se

This pretty picture of the flowers rising and falling with the
undulations of the ripples seems also to have impressed other
observers. In Mrs. Hemans’ well-known lines to the water-lily,

we read:
“Oh, beautiful thou art,

Thou sculpture-like and stately River-queen!
Crowning the depths, as with the light serene
Of a pure heart.

“ Bright lily of the wave!
Rising in fearless grace with every swell,
Thou seem’st as if a spirit meekly brave
Dwelt in thy cell.

“Lifting alike thy head,
Of placid beauty, feminine, yet free,
Whether with foam or pictured azure spread
The waters be.”

Even the ancients had an idea of a queenly style of feminine
grace and beauty in association with the water-lily, for it is to
them we owe the name Nymphaea, which dedicated these pretty
flowers to the nymphs or goddesses who presided over the
waters. The name is mentioned in this connection by Pliny, as

NYMPH-EA ODORATA.—SWEET-SCENTED WATER-LILY. 135

well as by Theophrastus and Dioscorides, two of the earliest
Greek writers extant. This ancient water-lily of the Greeks,
which they named Mymphaia leuca, still grows where they saw
it, in the lakes and ponds of Thessaly, and is the Mymphea alba
of modern botany. Our species, Mymuphea odorata, differs
from this one of the ancients and of the old world chiefly in
the size and fragrance of the flowers. The earlier botanists
supposed it to be the same species, and Gronovius speaks of it
as the Vywphea alba, with “ full and sweet flowers;” and Wilde-
now, though recognizing Aiton’s name of WV. odorata, remarks
that “it is different only in size,” which is not strictly correct, as
there are usually a greater number of stigmatic rays, more
strongly nerved leaves, and some other slight differences.
Torrey and Gray regard XV. reniformis of Walter, and NV. menor
of Decandolle, as good varieties; and Rafinesque gives others,
as parviflora, rubella, and chlortza (yellow root). Besides the
variations in the leaves and roots, there are shades of colors in
the flowers. It is not in every case that

“The water-lily to the night,
Her chalice rears of silver light,”

as Sir Walter Scott would say; for varieties of a deep-rose as
well as silver are often met with, an illustration of which we have
given in the upper flower of our plate. The leaves and sepals
are often tinged with red, even in the pure white petaled flowers,
so that the transition of the whole flower to a deeper color is one
that might be expected. Rafinesque writes of the rosy-flowered
kind as if it were common in “ New York and Ohio,” and says
it is not as odorous as the white kind. Of special locations for
the rose-colored forms Cape Cod and Falmouth, Mass., are
among the best known.

The fact that our “white sweet pond-lily” often comes with
rose-colored flowers, so long recognized here, does not seem to
be known to the cultivators of flowers in Europe, as the recent
discovery of a rosy variety of the European white species in a

13 6 NYMPH/AA ODORATA.— SWEET-SCENTED WATER-LILY.

lake in Sweden is thought by the horticultural papers to bea
great and valuable novelty. Another white species of the old
world, WV. dendata, also has a red variety, so it would seem that we
may look for these dark variations in any light-colored species.

The pond-lily is not only famous in poetry and in popular
history, but in its more matter-of-fact character has much to be
proud of. Dr. Riddell, a famous botanist of the past generation,
says: “The Nymphaea odorata grows in Lake Champlain, and its
juice is good against inflammations, burns, scalds; and the seeds
are good in thirst, vomitings, and diarrhceas.”

Rafinesque says that “its properties are similar to the
Nymphea alba of Europe, but much more effective and
decided. The roots are chiefly used, and are kept in shops in
New England.” Of its peculiar composition, he says it has
“starch, mucilage, sugar, resin, ammonia, ulmine, and_ tartaric
acid,” and amongst its powers is that of “dyeing of a dark-
brown and black color with iron.” He says further that the
“leaves are excellent food for cows and cattle,’ and that “in
Canada they are eaten in the spring boiled for greens.” And
the ladies will be glad to know that “the fresh juice of the roots,
mixed with lemon-juice, is said to be a good cosmetic, and to
remove pimples and freckles from the skin.”

It is remarkable how large a number of popular names the
water-lily has received. In the middle ages it was known in
different places in Europe as Swamp-weed, Swamp-poppy,
Venus’ Club, Venus’ Finger, Hercules’ Club, Water-can, and
Water-socks. In our country, according to Rafinesque, our
species has been known as Toad-lily, Cow-cabbage, and Water-
cabbage. .

Of the European form, Linnzeus noted that the flower raised
itself cut of the water and expanded about seven o’clock in the
morning, and was fully closed again about four in the afternoon,
EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—I. 2. Flower and unopened bud of the common white form.

3. Opening bud of the rose-colored variety, from a specimen furnished by Mr. Jackson
Dawson.

IeviLiyee), wOkos',

LOBELIA FEAYANA.
DR. FEAY’S LOBELIA.

NATURAL ORDER, LOBELIACE.

Logpetia FEAYANA, Gray.—Slender, a span high, diffusely branched from the base, glabrous
throughout: leaves small (a quarter to half an inch long), repand-detinculate, roundish
or obovate, or the small uppermost spatulate or lanceolate and sessile; raceme loosely four
to ten flowered ; pedicels as long as the flower, twice or thrice the length of the subulate
bract: calyx tube and capsule broadly obconical; the latter two-thirds inferior, its free
apex about the length of its subulate calyx lobes; these only half the length of the tube of
the bright blue corolla: anthers glabrous (except the bearded tips of the shorter ones) :
seeds oblong, with a rough cellular coat. (Gray's Synoptical Flora of North America.)

MWAIHEN the lover of flowers who is. not a botanist in the
strict sense of the term, hears a botanical name men-

Goned for the first time, he is very likely to ask what is its Eng-
lish or common one? It is not that botanical names are really
more difficult to remember than others, but that a sound is not
easily retained while unfamiliar. When once a botanical name
enters into common language, no one ever thinks of it as diffh-
cult; Thus in the present case there is, strictly speaking, no
English name, but the botanical name Loédelra has become so
familiar to all, that it has been received into every-day language,
and no one now thinks it a name hard to remember. The little
dwarf Lobelia of our gardens—the Lodela erinus from the Cape
of Good Hope—has made the genus well known to most of us.
The name itself is rather an old one, having been established by
Plumier, who, as Milne tells us, was “an ingenious Frenchman,
noted for his discoveries among American plants.” These works
on American plants were published in Paris, at various times
between 1693 and 1713. Lobel, after whom he named the

genus, flourished nearly a century before, and was an author of
(137)

138 LOBELIA FEAYANA.—DR. FEAY'S LOBELIA.

considerable repute among his contemporaries and successors.
Gilibert, a French author, who, in 1798, published a history of
the plants of Europe, especially refers to Lobel in terms of re-
spect. He was Flemish by birth, having been born at Lille, but
settled in England, “where,” says one author, “he published
several learned botanical treatises.” He was appointed botanist
and physician to King James the rst of England, and died in
London in 1616,

It appears, however, that the species which were originally
used to commemorate Lobel have been removed to another
genus, Scevola,; and others, which had been placed in the genus
subsequent to its original formation, were left to bear the honors
of the old family-name. Great numbers of species once Lobelias
have been removed to other genera, but it is still formidable in
number, perhaps not less than two hundred being still considered
as true Lobelias. They are scattered over most parts of the
world, many of them being found on the American continent.
Dr. Gray, in his “Synoptical Flora of North America,” enumer-
ates twenty-three, besides many marked varieties worthy of dis-
tinctive botanical names; and it is very remarkable, considering
how widely the species are scattered over the world, that not
one has been discovered, as yet, on the Pacific coast. Some
species grow as far west as the Rocky Mountains. New species,
however, are still being discovered, several having been found
of late years, and the present one, Lodelia Feayana, is among the
most recent of these modern discoveries. Dr. Gray received it
from South and East Florida, through Dr. Feay, Dr. E. Palmer
and Mrs. Mary Treat; and from the last named the plants were
obtained, which, on the grounds of the Bussey Institute, enabled
our drawing to be made, It is said to be remarkably effective
among the early spring flowers of this flowery land, and when
generally introduced to garden culture, will no doubt be as great
a favorite as its African relative, the common blue Lobelia, which,
in so many respects, it resembles. One of the greatest differ-
ences will be noted in the lip, which, in our species, is of three

LOBELIA FEAYANA.—DR. FEAY’S LOBELIA. 139

angular lobes. The garden Lobelia has the lip also in three
divisions, but these divisions are mere slits; indeed at a little dis-
tance the lip looks almost entire, and seems to have a regular
semi-circular outline. —

The whole structure of Lode/a is very interesting, and no
less so the natural order to which it belongs, Lodeliacee. The
plants of the order are not very far removed from the Aster
family or composites on the one hand, and the Campanulas or
Bell-flowers on the other; and in connection with these two afford
a very pretty lesson respecting transition or gradation between
great bodies in the vegetable kingdom. If we take a single
flower of an Aster, we find the single pistil divided at the apex,
the five anthers united together with their faces inward ; the pistil is
at first shorter than the anthers, but ultimately lengthening, and
pushing out as it grows the pollen from the tube formed by the
united stamens. In Lobelia we have a monopetalous corolla,
somewhat divided, and bursting irregularly on one side as
composites do when forming strap-shaped florets. The calyx is
generally united with the ovary, and the calyx lobes may be
regarded as the equivalent of pappus or sete, which often crown
the seed. It is chiefly in the ovarium that we first note any
great distinction. In Lodelia the seed-vessel contains numerous
small seeds, while in the composite there is but a single seed.
But with the numerous points of correspondence we might
expect to find some time a composite with more than one seed
in the capsule, or a Lodelioac:ous plant with but a single one.
And this is really the case in the latter instance, for there are
some few genera of Lodefacee which have but a single seed.
Few would ever mistake a Lodefia for a composite on a first
acquaintance, yet we see how difficult it is in a search to trace
very closely the essential points of difference. The same
difficulty will occur on the other side with Campanulaceous
plants. If the anthers were united here, and the pistil had a
curving tendency, instead of the regular bell-shaped flower we
find in Campanula we should have a structure probably bursting

I40 LOBELIA FEAYANA.—DR. FEAY'S LOBELIA.

on one side, and in many other points, perhaps, resembling a
Lobelia. In fact different degrees of cohesion of parts which
necessitate growth in accordance, or degrees of intensity or
of direction in the growth waves,—apparently slight causes—
account for the actual differences which divide some of the great
families of plants from one another.

The manner in which the pollen reaches the stigma and thus
fertilizes the flower has given rise to a great deal of speculation.
It is only after the pistil has pushed itself through the mass of
pollen that the stigmatic surface at the apex becomes exposed.
It seems very difficult for it to receive any of its own pollen on
this account, and the only way in which it can be fertilized is by
receiving pollen from other flowers by the aid of insects. This
view is held by Darwin and others. But it is certain that Lodelia
erinus will produce seeds freely when insects fitted for the work
of bringing pollen from a distance are wholly excluded, and it is
well worth studying how the pollen, necessary for fertilization, is
carried to the stigmatic surface. The species now illustrated,
L. Feayana, is so nearly related to the species employed by Mr.
Darwin in his experiments, that it has suggested this reference
to Mr. Darwin's views.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE,—1I. A small plant, full size. 2. Enlarged flower, showing the
form of the three-cleft lip. 3. Pistil, showing its curved form and circle of hairs beneath
the bilobed pistil. 4. Longitudinal section, showing the pistil surrounded above by the
united anthers before it has pushed its way through them,

io)

oA

eS) 2
ae
ane
= 5
el
2 z

Ne

Fen

any
mM

N |

CYNTHIA DANDELION.

THE DANDELION CYNTHIA.
NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITAE.

CyntuHta DANDELION, Decandolle.—Acaulescent; scapes leafless, single, one-flowered ; leaves
elongated, lance-iinear, entire or remotely toothed, rarely pinnatifid, the primary leaves
oblong-spatulate. Scapes six to eighteen inches in height, several from the same root.
Leaves some of them nearly as long as the scapes, more generally entire; when pinnatifid,
the lobes are two or three on each side, triangular. A variety in the mountainous districts
produces at length a short, decumbent stern. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also
Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and Chapman’s Flora of the
Southern United States.)

\ | MONG the best known plants is the Dandelion, and
i/ when its yellow buds appear even children hail them as

the harbinger of spring. As one of the earliest of spring flowers
it has received particular attention. Our own poet, Percival,
makes it an especial feature in his well-known “Ode to Spring:”
“The yellow buds are breaking,
The flowers in meadow are blowing;
And gentle winds are playing
Along the grassy vale,

Around the airy mountain,
And down the grassy vale.”

But the common Dandelion is not a native flower. It came to
this country with the white man, soon made itself at home, and
is now found wherever cultivation goes. Nor is there any allied
species of the genus native to the United States. But, in ancient
times, our plant was supposed to belong to the genus 7yox7mon,
which is closely related to 7Zaraxacum, the true Dandelion; and
when we see the root-leaves (Fig. 4), and the long, slender

achene (Fig. 3), it is not surprising that, in the condition of
(141)

142 CYNTHIA DANDELION.—THE DANDELION CYNTHIA.

botanical science at that early period, the Dandelion should have
suggested itself. How long the name Dandelion has been con-
nected with it does not appear, though as 7rcvximon Dandalion
it is described in Persoon’s works about 1807. But its supposed
relationship to the Dandelion seems to have been noted by
Gronovius, who made it 7ragopogon, which is a closely allied
genus, and the one to which our common garden salsify belongs.
The description which one of our earliest collectors (Clayton)
sent to Gronovius is so illustrative of the general accuracy of
the botanists of those days, that we may do well to refer to it here:

He says: “The flower is large, showy, of a sulphur color, the
stalk striate; leaves long, narrow, toothed, with soft spines set
on the margins; the outer florets expand while the inner ones
remain closed (see our Fig. 5), the calyx then assuming a coni-
cal figure (see Fig. 6); seeds like the purple-lowered Tragopo-
gon but smaller (Fig. 3),” many of these points, as we see, cor-
responding exactly with our plate. At this early period, how-
ever, botanical relationships were not understood as they are
now, especially the relationships of the composite order, and our
plant, after keing thought a 77agopogon, a Troximon, a Krigia,
and’ //yoserts, was given a separate place of its own, as Cyzdhia,
by David Don, in the “ New Edinburgh Philosophical Society’s
Proceedings,” in 1829, and it has remained Cyz/hza ever since.
Professor Gray, in his “ Manual,” says Cyzthia is “ perhaps from
Mount Cynthus,” and Professor Wood that “Cynthia is one of
the names of Diana.” It might be as well to explain to the
general reader that Cynthius is one of the ancient names given
to Apollo, and Cynthia to Diana, and that Mount Cynthus was
dedicated to both deities, so that the derivations of these two
authors are seen to be more in accord than they might appear,
in the absence of this explanation. David Don, who named the
genus, was very fond of giving classical names to plants, and
often, as in this case, without any apparent reason for their asso-
ciation with the genera he selected for them. While on the
subject of names, it may be remarked that the commen name,

CYNTHIA DANDELION.——-THE DANDELION CYNTHIA. 143

Dandelion, is a corruption of the French, which means “ Lion's
tooth,” and is in allusion to the tooth-like margins of the leaf of
the true Dandelion, which the root-leaves of our plant resemble.

The Cynthia Dandelion is one of the earliest flowers of its
season in the districts where it grows. This district, in a general
way, may be described as from Maryland west to Kansas, and
from there southwardly to Texas. The flowers are often open
before the frosts are wholly gone; and before March has de-
parted the “yellow buds” break forth in all their spring beauty,
and clothe the meadows with their brilliant flowers. In the
more mountainous districts, as noted by Professor Wood, the stem
often branches a little; and, as this character was overlooked in
the diagnosis of the first describer, that form has been given a
new name, Cyzthia montana, and it is in this condition that our
artist has taken it from a specimen furnished by Mr. Jackson
Dawson, of the Arnold Arboretum, but, as it is the same species,
it is not worth while to perpetuate a separate name.

On critically examining Cyzthia Dandelion, the student will
find many points of general interest. The root-leaves will be
noted as having the base so tapering as to be almost like perfect
leaf-stalks, and with the largest or widest diameter at the end (Fig.
4). But, on the flower-stalks, this order seems to be inverted.
The base widens, and the apex becomes more slender in pro-
portion to the distance from the root-leaves (Fig. 7). The soft
spines, or teeth, however, remain about the same size on both
classes of leaves. But, when we come to the flower, we find
that the strap-shaped florets are wider at their termination than
at their bases, and, in this respect, take after the root-leaves in
their general outline; and this lesson will be found very common
in plants of this order. All the parts of plants are but modified
leaves; but the phases of rhythmic growth decide what form
the new modifications shall take. When a flower is to be formed
in a plant of this character, a wave of growth starts from between
the root-leaves. As the little waves, marked by each stem-leaf,
get weaker, the forms of the leaves change in accordance with

144 CYNTHIA DANDELION.—THE DANDELION CYNTHIA.

the decrease in growth force. When this great rhythmic wave
is nearly exhausted, a new current starts again to form the parts
of the flower, and we may reasonably look for the same form of
modified leaves (petals) in the first start of this new wave growth,
as we found in the first start in growth of the wave which formed
the flower-stalk.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Branching stem. 2. Flower stem with head showing the
expanding involucre in fruit. 3. Achene with double pappus, the outer short and scale-like
at the base of the long hair. 4. Root (slightly tuberous) with root leaves. 5. Flower, with
all the florets strap-shaped, the interior not yet expanded. 6. Faded flower showing the
conical involucre. 7. Enlarged somewhat amplexicaul base of the stem-leaf.

Vu

‘a
thd tt.

SI R

CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES.

THE HORNED FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES, Brongniart.—Sori continuous, arising from two principal longi-
tudinal but slightly anastomosing veins or receptacles on each side between the costa and
the margin. Capsules lax, scattered on the receptacles, sub-globose, sessile, obscurely
reticulated; annules very broad, nearly complete, or reduced to five or six indistinct ar-
ticulations, or quite obsolete. Involucre membranaceous, continuous, formed of the re-
flexed margin of the frond, which are very broad, and meet at the back. Seeds or spores
few, very large, obtusely trigonal, each of the three faces beautifully concentrically striated,
filled with an oleaginous substance. (Hooker’s Species Filicum.)

RSRIAMES GATES PERCIVAL, one of the sweetest Ameri-
W323) can poets of the early part of the present century,

tells us—
‘Tis pleasant to stray in a tropical grove,

Where flowers, fruits, and foliage are blended above,
Where the sky, as it opens so vividly through,
Is pure as a spirit in mantle of blue,
Where the wind comes perfumed from the orange and lime,
And the myrtle is ever in bloom in that clime,
Where the citron its green and its gold ever wears,
And the birds are forever caressing in pairs ;—
O, ’tis pleasant a while in those groves to remain,
Till spring comes to visit and charm us again.”

One might almost imagine the poet had the modern Florida
in mind when he penned the above lines, for in these days of
easy communication with distant places, thousands of people find
it pleasant to remain a while in its orange and myrtle groves, till
spring returns to charm them back to their northern homes.

But it is not only the enchanted wanderer among Florida’s
tropical groves, or the one who delightfully breathes in its per-

fumed atmosphere, who is grateful for the modern means of
(145)

146 CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES.—THE HORNED FERN,

transportation to this fairyland,—the student of natural history
and especially of botany feels equal gratitude for present facilities
to explore the inmost recesses of its forests; and though it is now
over three hundred years ago since Captain Jean Ribeau gave
the account of his “Voyage to Florida,” nearly as many new
plants are discovered in this long known land as in some of the
newer territories of the United States.

The subject of our present sketch is one of these recent dis-
coveries. Indeed the only published note of its existence that
we find in American literature as we write is in the “ Catalogue
of the ‘Davenport Herbarium’ of North American Ferns,” where
it is recorded as having been obtained from “ Prairie Creek, in
slow moving water, Southern Florida,” the specimen “gathered
in July, 1878, and donated by Professor D. C. Eaton.” The
specimen from which our drawing was made is growing in the
greenhouse of the Arnold Arboretum, near Boston, under the
charge of Mr. Jackson Dawson. Ass it has not, therefore, found
its way into our books of reference, we have had to go to a
European source for the description already cited, which is of
the genus. As there is only one known, it does for the specific
character as well.

Though a new discovery among the “ Flowers and Ferns of
the United States,” it has been long known to botanists, having
been figured by the old English author, Plukenet, before the time
of Linnzus. Indeed, it is one of the most widely extended of
all ferns, being found in the warmer parts of all the four quarters
of our globe. To Linnzus, however, it seems to have been
known only as a native of Ceylon in the East Indies, and the
knowledge we have of its world-wide extension shows what great
progress geographical botany has made. In his time, too, it was
known as Acrostichum thalictroides, for the natural relationships
of ferns were not known very well at that time, and it is chiefly
within the past fifty years that the large fern-genera of the early
fathers of modern botany have been broken up into sections con-
venient for more perfect study. Even so late as 1789, when the

CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES. —-THE HORNED FERN. 147

natural system of Botany was made popular by the labors of A.
L. de Jussieu, and the more natural groups of species gathered
into distinct bodies, this great author enumerates only fourteen
genera in all the large family of ferns. The separation from
Acrostichum and formation into a separate genus as Ceraiopteris
dates from 1821, by Brongniart, who described and named it in
a French work, the “Bulletin de la Societe Philomatique,” but
some authors contend that Kaulfuss had named and described
it as Enobocarpus, a little before this, and so the plant has to be
sought for in some European works under this name. - However,
Sir W. J. Hooker insists on Ceratopieris as being the prior, and
hence the correct name. Ceratofleris is derived from two Greek
words meaning “horned” and “Fern,” and this name was evi-
dently suggested by the reflexed margins of the frond meeting
at the back, as noted in the description, which give the sori the
appearance of being enclosed in a hollow horn. To some of
the older botanists it was known as Acrostichunt siliguosum, the
specific name having been suggested by the same circumstance,
that is, the rolled pinnule appearing like a silique, as the hollow
seed-pods of cruciferous plants are termed. The specific name,
thalictroides, is, of course, from a supposed resemblance in the
fronds to some species of Zhalictrum, or “ Meadow-rue.”

The anatomical structure of this fern gives it a more than
usual interest to the botanist. The rings which surround the
sporangia in ferns are nearly obsolete in this, and Sir W. Hooker
was, therefore, at one time disposed not to regard it as a true
member of the fern family. Again, it is peculiar in being an
annual, while ferns in general are perennials, carrying over their
rhizome or root-stocks from year to year. Like annual plants
in other families, nature has made up for the shortness of its
individual life by giving to it the means of rapid propagation.
The spores are not as numerous as in most other ferns, but they
have powers of ready germination, and Mr. John Smith, in his
“Historia Filicum,” observes that, in the plant-houses of Kew
Gardens, young plants appeared wherever there was a moist

148 CERATOPTERIS THALICTRCIDES,—THE HORNED FERN.

surface. Besides this, buds appear in the angles of the divisions
of the frond, and, falling at maturity, make distinct plants.

In the uniform tint of green and heavy divisions of the frond,
there is absent the usual beauty of ferns. But Whittier tells us
that—

“Art’s perfect forms no moral need,

And beauty is its own excuse;

But for the dull and flowerless weed

Some healing virtue still must plead,

And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.”

His lines are especially applicable to this “dull weed,” which
has been put to more honorable use than most of its sister ferns.
Gaudichaud, a distinguished botanist, who edited the botany of

d

Captain Freycinet’s voyage of the “Uranie” and “ Physician” in
a French expedition round the world in 1810, notes that it is
regarded as a choice salad by the inhabitants along the river
Argana; and Sir W. J. Hooker states that, “in the Indian Archi-
pelago, this fern is boiled and eaten by the poor as a vegetable.”
It grows in shallow ponds or in wet, marshy places, often cover-

ing the whole surface with its green fronds,

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Growing plant showing (ta) perfectly developed barren
frond, (12) the growing frond and stipes of older ones. 2. An undivided segment of the
frond showing, (2a) enlarged, its venation, 3. An enlarged drawing of a finely-divided
pinnule.

peace

MR] pF

\Ny ARMA

Gepime TT \

é

ete,
4

a aves

ARISASMA TRIPHYLLUM.

THREE-LEAVED INDIAN TURNIP.

NATURAL ORDER, ARACE.

ARISMA TRIPHYLLUM, Torrey.—Leaves mostly two, divided into three elliptical-ovate pointed
leaflets; spadix mostly dicecious, club-shaped, obtuse, much shorter than the spathe, which
is flattened and incurved-hooded at the summit. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the
Northern United States. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and
Wood's Class-Book of Botany.)

HE plants-of this genus were classed with Arum by Lin-
VERS nzus, and our present species was the drum trtphyt-
Zum of that great man. Under this name it was known to all
our botanists up to about thirty years ago. The whole Arum
family were but imperfectly understood by the older students.
They saw that all had a certain general resemblance; but in time
many new genera were founded, and the present one, A77sema,
was taken from Avram by Martius, a well-known writer in 1831
on the Flora of Brazil, and confirmed in the year following by
Schott, a distinguished writer on Aracee. The dates are im-
portant to the critical student, as in some works Schott is cred-
ited with the foundation of the genus. It has puzzled botanists
to know what Martius derived the name of Avisema from. Ac-
cording to Pliny, 477s was the name of some very bitter plant, |
and it was sometimes called Avzsaron also. The roots and
leaves of some European Arums are intensely acrid, and they
are believed to be the same as are referred to by the ancient
writers under the same name. <Asisema seems to have no
meaning that is applicable to our plant. Some German botanists
believe the name was intended to be written Ariscema. If it

were Avisema, it would mean “hooded Arum,” and this would
(149)

150 ARISAMA TRIPHYLLUM.—THREE-LEAVED INDIAN TURNIP,

fit our species very well, for, as noted in the description we have
adopted from Dr. Gray, the upper part of the spathe forms a
standard or hood over the spadix to a more striking extent than
in any other with which we are acanainted. However, as a
plant’s name is “Eut a name” and nothing more, the rule is to
take the orthography as we find it, unless there be some grave
violation of botanical taste. In regard to Arum itself Linnaeus
has been charged with violating the laws he himself had laid
down. Rafinesque says: “ Linnaeus did very improperly, and
against his own botanical rules, change the previous name of
Tournefort Arzsarunz into Arum, which is a mere termination of
many other genera;” but, as we have seen, a77s and avov are only
Latin and Greek names for the same thing, and Linnzus was
within his rules of cutting off all superfluities. But this reference
to Rafinesque’s criticism shows how important botanists regard
the rigid adherence to rules of nomenclature.

An interesting feature in our plant is the variations in color of
the spathe and spadix ; that is to say, of the vase-like portion of
the inflorescence and the club-like process which occupies the
centre. Sometimes these are wholly green, and at other times
very highly colored; even the leaves are often spotted, and in
these particulars it has a singular coincidence with a near rela-
tive, the Avi maculatum of Europe, and it may perhaps on this
account claim some attention in connection with the legendary
and poetical allusions associated with that species; for there is a
legend in some parts of Europe that Arun was once wholly
green, but became spotted and colored by the accident of grow-
ing near the foot of the cross at the crucifixion of our Saviour.
Mrs. Hemans thus gives the story:

«Beneath the cross it grew;
And in the vase-like hollow of the leaf,
Catching from that dread shower of agony
A few mysterious drops, transmitted thus
Unto the groves and hills, their sealing stains
A heritage, for storm or vernal shower
Never to blow away.”

ARISAMA TRIPHYLLUM.—THREE-LEAVED INDIAN TURNIP. I51

The different colors of the spadices—some light and some
dark, though most frequently yellow—are much sought after in
the English species by young plant-collectors in the early Eng-
lish spring under the names of “Lords and Ladies,” the handsful
of the dark ones being the Lords, while the lighter ones are the
Ladies. They were also in the olden times called “Wake Robin
and Cuckoo-points,” these names not having any English mean-
ing as one might suppose, but being corruptions of very old
French names, unless indeed there may have been some con-
nection with the flowering of the Arum, and the first visits in
spring of the cuckoo, a migratory bird. This seems to have
been the idea in Shakespeare’s mind, who, in “Love’s Labor
Lost,” makes the showman sing in the character of Ver,

“When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And Lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then,”

Some have indeed thought that Shakespeare may have meant
the yellow butter-cups in this passage, because of the specified
yellow, but the prevailing association seems to be with the Eng-
lish Arum. Clare, a well-known English poet, says:

“« How sweet it used to be when April first
Unclosed the Arum leaves, and into view
Its ear-like flowers their cases burst,
Betinged with yellowish white or lushy hue.”

The old English names are now nearly obsolete. For our
plant in our country the most common popular names are “ Jack-
in-the-pulpit,” “ Preacher-in-the pulpit,” and “Indian Turnip.”

The last name is derived from the use of the roots as food by
the Indians. When raw, every part of the plant is extremely
acrid, and will blister the mouth or tongue when applied to
either of them; but, when roasted or boiled, all of this acridity dis-
appears, and the roots particularly are extremely nutritious.
Green says in his “ Botanical Dictionary,” published in the early

152 ARIS/EMA TRIPHYLLUM.—THREE-LEAVED INDIAN TURNIP.

part of the present century, that “it grows wild in wet places in
Virginia, Carolina, Pennsylvania, etc., where the savages boil the
spadix with the berries (see our Fig. 4) and devour it as a great
dainty.” It is said of the roots that one-fourth of the whole
bulk is starchy matter fit for food.

Rafinesque, from whom we have already quoted, says that “it
grows all over North America in woods; it is said to extend to
South America as far as Brazil; but probably it is a different
species that is found there ;” and it might be added that “ North
America” is very different now to what it was in Rafinesque’s
time, for our plant is not known much beyond the Missouri and
Mississippi rivers. To the eastward of this line it is found in.
every State of the Union. Though commencing to flower very
early, it may often be gathered so late as June, when the leaves
usually commence to decay. The berry-like seeds are at first
green, but at maturity become red as in the plate. By this time
the foliage has wholly disappeared, and the collector only knows
where the roots are by the clusters of fruit standing on short
stalks just above the ground.

The flowers are moneecious, that is to say the sterile ones are
by themselves in the portion of the spadix at a (Fig. 3), and the
fertile ones below at 6. But the pistillate flowers are not all fer-
tile, as we see in Fig. 4; onlya portion of the berries are wholly
perfect.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. Root and lower portion of the branch. 2. Upper portion
of the stem in flower. 3. Spadix with flowers male (a) and female (4) at the base. 4.
Mature fruit.

JR AA kFAGLe » UM

a eth
anerine
ae ‘

GERANIUM MACULATUM.

SPOTTED CRANE'S-BILL.
NATURAL ORDER, GERANIACEAE.

GERANIUM MACULATUM, Linnzeus.—Stem erect, dichotomous above; leaves three to five parted ;
petals entire, twice as long as the ca'yx. Stem twelve to eighteen inches high, hairy.
Leaves two to three inches long, marked with pale blotches, radical leaves on petioles
three to six or eight inches in Jength; stem leaves on shorter petioles, the uppermost subses-
sile. Flowers purple, large, subcorymbose. (Darlington’s /lorg Cestrica. Sve also
Gray’s Flora of the Northern United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United
States, and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.)

Pa NesO “general view of the flora of the United States” would
aM) be perfect without one of the Geraniacee, so we give
his now as the prettiest American representative of this very
interesting family of plants. We have not many in America to
choose from, for the genus Geranium belongs chiefly to the
eastern hemisphere, where they number a hundred species, while
there are only about half a dozen within all the wide boundaries
of the United States. Some of the species of the old world were
well known to the early Greeks. The name Geranium, though
adopted from Pliny, the ancient Latin author, is really the Greek
Geranion. Geranos is the Greek word for crane, a well-known,
long necked bird; and as there is some resemblance in the half
mature seed-vessels which in some of the species curve down-
wards from the summit of their slender stems, it is thought prob-
able that the name was given to the plant by the Greeks from
this resemblance; and from the name as associated with these
drooping fruited kinds we have the common name of “crane’s-
bill.” Many of the names of plants in use by the ancients have
been applied by modern botanists to genera having only a distant
. (453)

154 GERANIUM MACULATUM.—SPOTTED CRANE’S-BILL.

or no relation to those which bore the ancient names. It is
pleasant to feel in the case of the Geranium that we can be
really carried back by it into association with people who lived so
many thousands of years ago.

Our “spotted leaved Crane’s-bill” is closely allied to some
of the European forms, and like them may lay claim to much of
the beauty of detail that has made some of them so famous. A
French author remarks that “the pencilled-leaf Geranium, to the
negligent and careless observer, appears a simple, common
flower ; but examine it closely, mark the pink veins that mean-
der in every direction over its petals, sometimes so delicate as to
be scarcely visible ; study it well, and the more you do so the
more beautiful will it appear, and learn thence to admire the
skill and ingenuity displayed in the Creator's works.” In our
species there are not only the delicate pink veins of the petals to
be admired, but also the veining of the leaves,—the veins being
prominent as well as beautifully arranged. This arrangement
of the veins, or, as the botanist would call it, the venation, is of
as much interest to the scientific student as to the lover of art.
Very often we can tell by the veins the order to which a plant
belongs, but in the present case we cannot distinguish these
leaves from those of some of the Razunculus or Crow-foot family.
The root leaves of our Spotted Crane’s bill and of Anemone Penn-
sylvanica, for instance, might be mixed together, and it would
trouble the young student to separate them. And after all there
may be a closer relation between the plants composing the
Geranacee and those of Ranunculace than botanists generally
would be disposed to grant. If it were not for the lengthening of
the styles or slender portion of the pistils, and their union into a

”

sort of beak which gives it the “crane’s-bill” character, there
would be very little reason for not classing the Geraniums with
the Crow-foots. Even as it is, we have nearly the same length
of pistils in CZemat’s, and when the Geranium seed is mature
there is the feathery tail which Clematis has. There are many

other matters connected with the relationship of Geraniums to

GERANIUM MACULATUM.—SPOTTED CRANE'S-BILL. 155

other orders which are of too abstract a nature to refer to in a
popular work; but the student will find the Geranium an ex-
cellent aid in this attractive study.

A very interesting point in reference to the Geranium macu-
Jatum is the fact that, though it is one of the most widespread of
our native plants, it shows very little disposition to vary in. the
most widely separated locations. It is found almost everywhere
from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean
west, almost to the Rocky Mountains, often when in open woods
in the greatest profusion. In Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee
it is frequently so abundant as to make it difficult to walk through
its herbage. In Pennsylvania, from whence our specimen was
taken, and which induced the selection of Dr. Darlington’s
description, they are more scattered through the half-shaded
woods; but still make no mean show among the pretty flowers
which make a woodland walk in that State so pleasant in May
and June. The only variations of importance are in the shades
of color. Sometimes they are brighter than in our picture, and
then again they are often found nearly white.

In addition to its artistic beauties, and its scientific interest, it
contributes in a more material way to the wants of man. It was
a famous remedy among the Indians for wounds, ulcers and hemor-
rhages, and has been found by many good physicians very useful
in dysenteries, especially among children.

Many of the old world species have found favor with the poets
and emblematic writers; but, so far as we know, Mrs. William
Wirt, one of our most intelligent authors in this line, is the only
one who has given our “spotted Crane’s-bill” any attention. She
dedicates it to “envy,” as, she remarks, “it has not much beauty to
recommend it, yet its retiring and modest worth, so generally
overlooked for those (Geraniums) admitted to gay saloons, may
well be supposed to excite something like the envy of its more
favored rivals.”

As noted in Dr. Darlington’s description, the leaves are often
marked with white blotches, and thus we have the Latin specific

156 GERANIUM MACULATUM.—SPUTTED CRANE’S-BILL.

name waculatum,; but it is well that we have come to look on the
names of plants as mere names, and nothing more, for very often
the student would be unable to find any “spots” to warrant the
“maculate” designation.

Diane Je)

CaNOTH A MIssou RIENSIS

CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS.

LARGE-FRUITED EVENING PRIMROSE.

NATURAL ORDER, ONAGRACE.

CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS, Sims.—Simple, decumbent; leaves coriaceous, lanceolate, acute,
short-acuminate, petiolate, sub-entire, downy, canescent when young; flowers very
large, axillary; calyx-tube three or four times longer than the downy, canescent ovary ;
capsule very large, oval, depressed, with four broad-winged margins. (Wood’s Class-
Book of Botany.)

JHE species of Evening Primrose here illustrated is well

Mzeui} ~worthy of the beautiful picture our artist has made of
it. Of course, much of the beauty of the representation is
derived from the pretty red to which the stems turn as they
mature, and which makes a good contrast with the greens and
yellows of the other parts. It is a singular fact that it is almost
impossible to find any plant without some trace of red about it,
but this fact is generally overlooked by flower painters, and it is
remarkable that it should be so disregarded, as by its use a much
better effect can be obtained than in the usual style of flower
painting, as well as being more just to the good taste of nature
herself.

The Evening Frimrose family is a very large one. Mr.
Sereno Watson in his revision of the genus, in 1873, made sixty-
eight species indigenous to North America; but though among
them are many beautiful kinds there are few more striking in so
many respects than the one we now illustrate. The size of the
flower alone attracts. It is often much larger than the one we
have chosen for our drawing. Some authors speak of having
seen flowers six inches across.

The namesake of this, the common English primrose, has a
(157)

I 58 CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS.—LARGE-FRUITED PRIMROSE,

famous place in English literature. English poetry is full of
allusions to it. Shakespeare refers to the flower in many of his
plays; and in Cymbeline, especially, which is so full of floral
references, Aviragus is made to say, after bearing the dead

Imogen in his arms:
“ With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
Ill sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose.”

Though we have some species of Primula native to our
Alpine regions—that is to say, primroses of a certain kind—we
have nothing that will fairly carry with it any suggestiveness
to the primrose of poetry, Primulas though they be. Some of
the Cxotheras have a faint resemblance in form and color to the
true Primrose, and from this fact we have the popular name
Evening Primrose—‘“ evening” because they rarely open when
the sun shines. This habit of evening or night flowering has
attracted much attention to the plant, and it has received a
great share of attention from the poets, as well as the original
“pale-flower” from which it derived its name. Bernard Barton,
a well-known English poet, in his “Invitation to Flowers,”
addresses ours especially in view of its late opening:

“You, evening primroses, when day has fled,
Open your pallid flowers, by dews and moonlight fed.”

The same author has a poem wholly devoted to the “Evening
Primrose,” too long for our pages, but full of happy imagery, in
which hope and trust under affliction are the prevailing senti-
ments. He concludes the poem by observing:

“ But still more animating far,

We hope that, as thy beauteous bloom
Expands to glad the close of day,
So through the shadows of the tomb,

May break forth mercy’s ray,”

There is one passage in this poem, however, which deserves
more than a passing note, on account of an observation by one

CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS. —LARGE-FRUITED PRIMROSE. 159

of our earlier botanists, as it shows how the good poet has to
observe as closely, perhaps, as the botanist. He says:
* T love, at such an hour, to mark,
Their beauty greet the light breeze chill,
And shine ’mid shadows gathering dark,
The garden’s glory still.”

Pursh, when writing of an allied species, remarked that in the
darkest night the flowers could always be plainly seen, but that
they appeared white then instead of yellow, and he thought it
might be owing to some phosphorescent property in the petals.

Again, we may give an instance of the correspondence be-
tween poetical observation and the observations of botanists, in
a passage from Keats, another celebrated English poet:

“A tuft of evening primroses,
O’er which the wind may hover till it dozes;
O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that it is ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers.”

And this immediate starting of buds into ripe flowers has been
noticed especially in our species, one observer having heard the
opening of the blossoms, so suddenly do they expand. Pursh
tells us that in his observations this opening generally occurred
about five o’clock in the evening.

In looking into its botanical history there seems to have been
some ill feeling among the early botanists about the original
naming of the plant, and the result is that different authors have
different names for it. The first published description is by
Sims, in the “ Botanical Magazine,” for 1814. A flower was sent
to him from a plant growing in Mr. Nuttall’s garden near Liver-
pool, by whom it was found in the neighborhood of the Missouri
in North America, and on this he named it G:xothera Afissourt-
ensis. Pursh about this time was in London preparing for his
“Flora of North America,” and had permitted Sims to examine
his manuscript, in which this species was described as Cenothera
macrocarpa. Sims supposed his plant different from the one in
Pursh’s herbarium. Pursh’s work appeared very soon afterwards

160 (ENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS. —LARGE-FRUITED PRIMROSE.

and showed that Sims’ plant was really the same as his, and in-
sisted on his name, chiefly because “the specific name is inappli-
cable, as it never was found anywhere else but near St. Louis,
where Mr. Nuttall gathered ripe fruit of it, specimens of which I
have seen.” Mr. Nuttall follows, in 1818, with his “Genera of
North American Plants,” and sets aside both their names, and
describes it as @©. a/ata, for no other reason apparently than that
it “more appropriately” represented the large-winged fruit (Fig.
3). Modern botanists, however, look on a name with no mean-
ing as quite as good as the “most appropriate,’ and adhere
strictly to the law of priority of description, and this gives the
name of Sims’ @inothera Missouriensis as the correct one.

Mr. Nuttall tells us that it was first discovered by Mr. Brad-
bury, thirty miles from St. Louis “on the Merrimac,” meaning of
course the Missouri; but since then it has been found widely
extended throughout the Southwest. It was even collected, in
1862, by Hall and Harbor in the Rocky Mountains, but is prob-
ably rare so far north, as it seems not to have been collected by
subsequent botanists.

The botanical name @:xo/hera is a very ancient one. Lin-
neus believed it to be the “podded Lysimachia” of Theo-
phrastus, a very ancient Greek writer. Of modern botanists,
Sir William J. Hooker says it is from “ozzos, wine, and ¢éhera,
searching or catching, from the root having caught the perfume
of wine;” but our American text-books tell us it is not that the
root catches the perfume of wine, but that those who ate the root
caught a greater taste for wine. The moderns, however, catch
the taste for wine so easily that no herb is necessary to aid them;
and, at any rate, whatever may have been the plant or the mean-
ing intended by the ancients, we may remember that it could not
have been one of our Evening Primroses, no matter how near
the relationship may be guessed to be, as the genus Cxothera
is wholly American, and, of course, was entirely unknown to the
Greeks and Romans.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. One of several branches forming a plant. 2. An unopened
flower. 3. A seed-vessei nearly mature,

Sens IL Vor] y PLATE 40
S nN eg .

Wes
Ry

ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.

L. PRANG & Company, Boston

este

ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.
CHAMISSO'S SHIELD-FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

ASFIDIUM MUNITUM, Kaulfuss.—Stem tufted, four to nine inches in length, strong straw-colored,
densely clothed especially below, with large glossy lanceolate scales; fronds one to two
fect long, four to eight inches broad; pinnze close, three to four inches in length, three-
eighths to half an inch broad, the apex acuminate, the edge finely spinulose, serrated
throughout, the upper side auricled and the lower obliquely truncate at the base; texture
sub-coriaceous; rachis generally scaly; veinlets fine, close; sori in two rows near the
edge. (Eaton’s Ferns of North America.)

N Vancouver’s celebrated voyage, Chamisso, the botanist

of the expedition, collected largely on the northwest
coast, and many of the ferns of that region especially were made
known to us through his labors. Kaulfuss, the German botanist,
who, in 1824, described the ferns of this collector, named this one
Aspidium munitun. Professor Eaton well suggests that it may
“commemorate the original collector in its popular name, and
hence we have “Chamisso’s Shield-Fern.” Asprdium is from
aspidion, a Greek word denoting a little shield, which name was
suggested by the shield-like structure of the involucre or indu-
sium, as we may note in our Fig. 2. The specific name munitum
may have been suggested by the munificent manner in which the
plant is furnished with scales, which in strong plants forms a very
striking character. The species is closely related to the Christ-
mas Shield-Fern of the Atlantic States, Asprdium acrostichoides.
This is also known to be very well clothed with chaffy scales, but
not near to the extent that the Aspedium munitune is.

In a dried specimen, before us as we write, collected by Dr.
Edward Palmer in southern California, the stipe at its junction
(161)

162 ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.—CHAMISSO’S SHIELD-FERN,

with the rhizome is so abundantly covered with broad, chaffy
scales, as to look like the feathered head of a bird. Sometimes
these chaffy scales extend a long way up the stipe or stem of
the frond, occasionally reaching the foliaceous portion. It is,
however, variable in tnese and other respects in common with
most ferns. Judging by numerous specimens in the Academy
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the species is more than
usually variable. Ten years after it was named by Kaulfuss, it
was collected by Nuttall on Wyeth’s expedition of 1834, and the
specimens then obtained are so different from the original spe-
cies, as to appear quite distinct, and are labelled in Nuttall’s
handwriting “Aspidium Columbianum,” which is erased and
under-written “Aspidium Oreganum,” as it was uncertain whether
or not to make it a distinct species. And the specimens vary very
much in the size of the plants according to location. Palmer’s
from Gadalupe Island has a frond of over two and a half feet, with
a stipe of more than a foot in length. A small and very narrow
form is marked in Nuttall’s collection “Aspidium Willamettense,
from the Rocks of the Willamette.” Fronds collected by Prof.
Bolander from Oakland, California, are only about two feet in
length in all, the stipe not being much over eight inches. The
specimens collected by Bigelow in California, on the Whipple
exploring expedition, are not more than six inches long, while
others from Dr. Gibbon are about the size we have chosen for
our illustration. Our specimen, however, Fig. 1, as may be seen
by there being only a very small portion of the frond in fruit, is a
comparatively young one, for in mature plants fully one-half of
the frond may be fertile, just as we find under similar conditions
the eastern Aspidium acrostichoides,

As in the case of the Christmas-Shield Fern of the East, the
Western collector could not say he had to wait

“ Till the spring blossomed again,
Till the birch first unfolded its leaves on the shore
And the robin first warbled its strain,

as in the language of the poet Percival he would have to say

ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.—CHAMISSO’S SHIELD-FERN. 163

of flowering plants and many other ferns, before enjoying a
study of its beautiful form, for like its Eastern relative it is ever-
green and furnishes material in excellent condition for examina-
tion all through the winter season, and while yet, as Lowell
would say, there are

“« Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind
Wakes all the green strings of the forest lyre.”

In the correspondence of our botanical friends are many
references to this beautiful fern which will give a fair idea of
how it behaves when it is at home. Ina letter from Dr. C. C.
Parry, of Davenport, Iowa, who collected in California, we find
“In the shade of Pine woods grow robust clumps of Aspidium
muntum. In these situations it attains its greatest perfection.
It is much in habit like the Eastern A. acrostichotdes, and like
that an evergreen when slightly protected by snow. It is very
firm in its texture, and when, as they generally are, abundantly
invested with fruit dots, they have a particularly rich appearance.”

Dr. C. L. Andrews, of Santa Cruz, writes: “In moist, shady
places of our section of country, we find Aspidium munitum
usually in company with Asprdium argutum and Pleris aquilena.
Sometimes it will find itself where some little stream trickles
down a gulch under the shade of the Red-wood (Seguoza semper-
virens), when it is of surpassing luxuriance, often three to four
feet high, almost rivalling the Woodwardia of our coast in size,
It will not live long after it finds itself in open spots, nor does it
choose level places unless well sheltered and moist. When the
atmospheric conditions suit, it is not particular about the soil, for
it is found clinging to rocks and thriving in poor gravelly places.
Moisture and a place to cling to it evidently regards as es-
sentials.”

Again, Dr. W. A. T. Stratton, of Petaluma, on April 12th, 1879,
says: “Some of our ferns grow to a great size here. Some
years ago] came ona group of Asprdium munitum and Wood-
wardia radicans in a deep ravine in Morin county, beneath

164 ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.—CHAMISSO’S SHIEI.D-FERN.

Sequoia sempervirens, which were grand beyond conception.
Each frond swept in graceful curves, some bending even to
the ground, with a majestic beauty that thrilled me, and I
could not help uncovering my head in profound admiration.”
Mr. George C. Woolson, of Jersey City, writes that fronds are
often found “five feet high, and we may regard it as one of
’and he finds it to do
well under cultivation. Shirley Hibberd’s London Gardener's
Magazine for February 8th, 1879, states that it has already been

introduced to culture in the Royal gardens of Kew, where it

the finest of our North American ferns,’

proves to be “a handsome species, and very hardy, but being a
rarity, a select place should be chosen for it.” Dr. Andrews
says “it is often cultivated as a house fern in California, but
then the fronds become dense and dwarfed.”

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. A complete, but rather immature plant from the collection
of the Arnold arboretum grown by Mr. Jackson Dawson. 2. An enlarged pinnule,
showing the arrangement of the veins, and the disposition of the sporangia on them, as
also the spinnulose margin. 3. Side view, enlarged, showing the shield-like indusium
over the sporangia, :

WARKAAAKY, <i) es
MHERIES Il Vow

rT OQapwa ye 2b ON YIE__

STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.
THE STENOSIPHON.

NATURAL ORDER, ONAGRACEAE.

STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS, Spach.—Tube of the calyx filiform or almost capillary, much pro-
ionged beyond the ovary, recurved or declined after flowering, at length deciduous; the
limb four-parted, much shorter than the tube. Petals four, unguiculate, unequal. Sta-
mens eight, erect, the alternate ones a little shorter: filaments capillary: anthers oblong,
fixed by the middle. Ovary oval, one-celled, with four suspended ovules: style erect, fili-
form, dilated at the apex: stigma four-lobed. Fruit (very small) coriaceous and indehis-
cent, ovate, convex externally, flattish within, about eight-ribbed, one-seeded. (Torrey &
Gray’s Flora of North America, See also Porter’s flora of Colorado.)

% FagHIS innocent-looking flower with a long Greek name was
wii first discovered by Long’s exploring expedition on
the Arkansas river, in 1819. It was regarded by Nuttall as a
Gaura, and named by him G. Znzfola, under which name it is
described in most of the works immediately succeeding that time.
A more recent author, Spach, in a revision of the order Onagra-

ce, separated this genus from Gaura, describing it as Séenosz-
phon, the name being derived from two Greek words signifying
“slender tube,” which is a very characteristic name in view of the
remarkably long and slender tubes of the flowers. Up to this
time there has been no species discovered but this one, and the
whole generic character from Torrey and Gray is given instead
of the mere specific description to which we usually confine our-
selves. The species is found nowhere but in the United States,
and not far beyond the location of its original discovery, the
Arkansas, as given by Nuttall. Dr. Parry collected it in Colo-
rado in 1861, and it is among the collections of Canby from the
same region ten years later, as noted in Porter's Flora of Colo-

vado. In the collections of Lindheimer from Texas it is described
(165)

166 STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.—THE STENOSIPHON.

as growing on high prairies and in rocky soil, and Ruffner says it
is common in northern Texas. One author refers to it as being
a peculiar feature of dry rocky knolls, covering with graceful
beauty, spots on which little else will grow at all, and we may
almost imagine it furnished the

“Rocks rich with summer garlands,”

in the

ef savannahs where the bison roves,”

and

es where the desert eagle wheels and screams,”

of which Bryant tells us in one of his poems. ‘These arid parts
of our territory seem to be its chosen home. The plant illus-
trated was from Texas, and kindly presented to us by Dr. George
Thurber. The drawing was made quite late in the season, after
the plant had materially exhausted itself; and the first flowers
were rather larger than we have represented, and the leaves
during the early part of the summer are nearly as large as
weeping-willow leaves. It grows vigorously in good garden
soil, as if it did not need much coaxing to give up its love for
its dry native home. It does not attempt to flower in Philadel-
phia gardens till frost may be expected to appear. fut it trans-
plants easily into a box or pot, and with very slight protection
from frost blooms freely all the winter long. Torrey and Gray
speak of it asa perennial; but in our experience it dies after
flowering. Its woody roots are probably deceptive: at best it is
perhaps but a biennial. It is however very easily propagated
by cuttings, and in this way can be continued by the florist,
without difficulty, from year to year. Its gracefully elegant
racemose branchlets of rosy-tinted white flowers specially com-
mend it to the artistic designer in flower work. It will be a
popular winter-flowering plant when its merits in this particular
become better known.

The lovers of peculiarities in structure will find in the long
slender tubes, already noted, an interesting subject for examina-
tion. They are so long and slender, so hair-like, that if green

STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.—THE STENOSIPHON. 167

they might easily be taken without close examination for pedi-
cels or flower stalks. It is difficult to conceive for what special
advantage to the plant such a very slender tube is designed.
The seed vessel, also, is remarkably small. After the flower has
faded there seems to be nothing left in the axils of the bracts,
and only the careful observer, lens in hand, is likely to discover
that perfect seed-vessels have been produced.

It will also be an interesting study in connection with other
plants of the order Oxagracee, of which the /uchsra and the
Evening Primrose are familiar examples. The quaternary type,
as represented in the four petals, four sepals, and twice four
stamens, prevails through the whole order. In the length of the
tube of the corolla if not in slenderness we may also find a
parallel to our plant in many of the family. The @vothera or
“Evening Primrose” is also closely allied to it; but while so
many of this genus open only at evening or morning, or during
dull, cloudy weather, the Svexos7phon is an especial lover of
daylight and bright skies.

Most of the order Oxagracee give great pleasure to mankind
by their beauty. Our gardens and greenhouses would be badly
off without them. As subjects for the artist they are ever tempt-
ing his pencil or brush; and the artist, as his works abundantly
show, is as ever ready to avail himself of their beautiful hues,
colors, and elegant forms. We shall be very much surprised if
the pretty addition we now bring to notice does not become as
popular as its brethren, as there is so much that is truly artistic
to recommend it.

The order has few qualities of any service to man beyond this
simple gift of beauty; and the species we now illustrate is not
known to have anything but its beauty to attract us to it. Its
relationship to Gauva, a somewhat extensive genus, prevents our
attention being so closely drawn to its solitary condition, as it
generally is when a genus of but a single species stands entirely
isolated from all near kindred. And yet there may be some
advantages in cases of this kind, as we can better study the vari-

168 STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.—THE STENOSIPHON.

ous steps by which new forms have been introduced. Geology
shows that the ancient flora of the earth was different from ours,
and yet closely related to it. We find also that the members of
our present flora vary under differing circumstances over the
earth; and the tracing of the connecting links by which one part
is bound to the other is no mean element in the pleasure of
modern botanical studies.

Almost all pretty flowers have familiar or common names in
addition to their botanical designations,—or they soon receive
them. Very often all may see their fitness, but occasionally
they are inappropriate.. Where none has been given, some
have been suggested in our work. In the present case the
plant has no common name, and it is not easy to offer one
from a translation of its Greek name, “ Slender-tube,” that is
likely to be popular. Possibly in the future, when its late
autumn attraction in the flower-garden is fully appreciated, it
may be known as the “ October-Beauty,” just as we have a
« Spring-Beauty,” a “Meadow-Beauty,” and so on. For the
present we will content ourselves with “ Stenosiphon.”

ert cx TT IW
DERIES [[ VOL.1

ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACE*

Rare 1 Vat I

=

ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM.

CROWNED LILY.

NATURAL ORDER, LILIACE,

ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM, Torrey.—Bulb globose, tunicated, eight to nine lines thick, exter-
nal membrane separate from the interior. Leaves four to six, appearing with the flowers,
six to eight inches long, scarcely more than half a line wide. Scape two to four inches
long. Spathe of three or four lanceolate, membranaceous pieces. Umbel three to four flow-
ered, pedicels six to twelve lines long. Perianth violet, ten to twelve lines long. Crown
three lines long. Style five to six lines long, drawn up above the crown. Segments two to
two and a half lines long. (Baker in xi. vol. of the Yournal of the Linnean Society of
London. See also Botany of the Mexican Boundary Commission.)

GAMA TER the war which occurred between Mexico and the
United States, about the middle of the present century,
large tracts of Mexican territory were ceded to the United
States, by which its lines were very much extended. It became

necessary to have a clear understanding as to the exact boun-
daries between the two countries, so a commission was agreed
upon, by which officers from each should together make a
survey. On the part of the United States, Lieutenant W. H.
Emory was placed in charge of the party, receiving his commis-
sion from the President in 1854. Competent assistants in the
various branches of science were appointed, and full collections
of objects of Natural History made; and the results of their
labors are known in literature as the “Reports of the Mexican
Boundary Survey.” The Botany of the expedition was worked
up by Dr. Torrey, and it was here that he first described the
genus Androslephium as now understood, the name being evi-
dently derived from two Greek words referring to the crown-like

arrangement of the stamens, so conspicuous in the centre of the
(169)

170 ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM.—CROWNED LILY.

flower. The plant had been collected by others some little time
before, but its place in the botanical system had not been accu-
rately determined. At any rate, our knowledge of it is but of
comparatively recent date, and even yet we do not know much
of its habits or behavior, or what may be its contribution to the
general aspects of nature in the places where it is found, for few
collectors seem to have met with it, and those fortunate ones
have not been able to tell anything materially of its local history.

This and allied Liliaceous plants are very interesting, botani-
cally, as proving clearer than many other tribes do, the great
unity of nature. The roots, the leaves, the stems, flowers and
general structure of one species are so closely related to those of
another, that it is almost impossible to fix on any certain and
definite line whereby to divide them; and we can learn among
these plants, perhaps better than among many others, that what
we call genus, though a natural and not an artificial arrangement,
as much so as day is distinct from night, yet runs so closely
and insensibly into others that we are often justified in believing
that the one has grown out of, or has been in some way con-
nected with the other. Now, in the present case, its first observ-
ers seem to have regarded it as a AZ//a, a genus established by
Cavanilles, a Spanish botanist, in 1793; but the “filaments united

’

into a crown at the throat of the tube,” in such a conspicuous
way, and as well shown by our artist in the expanded flower,
seemed to Dr. Torrey to be grounds for forming for it a new
genus. But how slight this distinction is may be inferred from a
remark by Dr. C. C. Parry, in his “Botanical Observations in
Southern Utah,” published in the 9th volume of the “American
Naturalist,” when, referring to a species of A/7//a, found there, he
says, “which exhibits an equally well-marked corona (crown)
sub-tending the stamens, thus apparently invalidating the dis-
tinctions which have been relied on for separating the allied
genera of MZi//cz.”’ As to one of these “ genera of the sub-tribe
Afillee,’ Dr. Torrey himself remarks, while establishing the
genus, “the Mexican genus Lessera most resembles this, but it

ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM.—CROWNED LILY. 17!

differs in the very short tube of the perianth (the lower portion of
the flower), in the tube of filaments having only a short tooth
between the filaments, and in the form of the capsule.” Fut in
some of the allied genera the length of the tube would not be
of much consideration. In some unquestioned Millas, for in-
stance, the “tube of the perianth” is three-fourths the length of
the whole flower, while in other cases it is no longer than we find
in the subject of our present chapter. We thus see how diffh-
cult it will be for the student to decide on the genera of these
Liliaceous plants, when he collects them for the first time. Asa
general rule the union or the separation of the parts is regarded
as among the best characters. The theoretical structure of a
lily flower is to have three sepals (the usual calyx), three petals
(the corolla), and a similar series of two sets of three, resulting in
six stamens and three pistils; and it is chiefly from the manner
in which these various parts are united or developed in proportion
to one another, that characters to distinguish the various genera
are found. Sometimes, as in the ordinary lily flower, the apex
of the pistil is divided into three distinct parts, but in our plant
as we see in Fig. 2, the apex is inclined to be capitate, or termi-
nating in a little pin-like head. This, though there were no other
characters, would at once suggest to the student that it was not
a Lilium. Then there may be characters drawn from the
phases of growth, which, however, are not often referred to in
botanical works, because so much has to be derived from dried
specimens wherein these life-characters cannot be observed. In
many plants the stamens and pistils finish their growth at or
about the expansion of the corolla; but we see in our plant that
the pistil is nearly complete long before the stamens, which do
not take on their peculiar crown-like form until the segments of
the “perianth” have fully expanded.

Again, the roots of these plants deserve more study for botan-
ical characters than they have received. In our specimen there
were several buds (Fig. 3), which seemed to indicate that new
corms may be formed by offsets. And then at the base of the

172 ANDROSTEPHIUM VIOLACEUM.—CROWNED LILY.

corm we find a thick, fleshy, root-like projection (Fig. 4) extend-
ing downwards larger than the corm itself, and very different from
the thready rootlets appearing from the upper portion. Why so
much of the substance of the old plant should be spent in form-
ing this fleshy root is not clear, unless the plant expects to get
repaid for the exertion in the amount of moisture such a spongy
mass may draw in, and which, in the dry places in which the
plant usually is found, would be very desirable when the plant is
in flower.

As we have said, little is yet known of it from its native places
of growth. Dr. Torrey notes that his specimens were gathered
by Dr. R. Gleason, near Fort Arbuckle, and that it grows “on
hills and prairies, on the Rivers Blanco and Colorado in Texas,”
and so late as 1871, Mr. Watson, in Clarence King’s Report,
speaks of it as consisting of a single “Texan” species. But in
1875, Dr. Parry found it in Scuthern Utah, where, he says, it is
quite common on gravelly hills near St. George, and among the
earliest of spring flowers, to give a character to the remarkable
scenery. Our illustration is probably from the same section as
noted by Dr. Parry, as the specimen was kindly sent to us by
Mr. John Reading, of Salt Lake City.

It makes a beautiful picture as drawn by our artist for the
plate, and it will probably become a very popular hardy spring
flowering “ bulb” in our gardens,

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1I. A complete plant in flower. 2. An unexpanded flower, cut
down lengthwise to show the internal organs. 3. The old corm with young buds. 4. A
thick, fleshy root, proceeding from the base of the o!d corm.

(aN

SSIA CHAMAXC!

) 1 29. Coy iy Poe
ANG & COMPANY, DOST\

PuatE 43.

CASSIA CHAMA:CRISTA.
LARGE-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PEA.

NATURAL ORDER, LEGUMINOSA:.

CassIA CHAMACRISTA, Linnzeus.—Stems rather leaning or spreading; leaflets eight to twelve
or fifteen pairs, linear-oblong; flowers rather large; stamens ten, unequal. Stem one
to two feet high, firm and sub-ligneous at the base, much branched, often purplish.
Leaflets half an inch to near an inch long, minutely ciliate-serrulate, sub-sessile ; common
petiole about one-third of an inch in length below the leaflets, with a depressed or cup-
like gland on the upper side. Flowers deep bright yellow (usually with purple spot at the
base), in lateral sub-sessile fascicles above the axils of the leaves,—often in pairs, sometimes
three or four. Legume about two inches long, hairy at the sutures. (Darlington’s ora
Cestrica. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, Chap-
man’s Mora of the Southern United States, and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.)

é By HE familiar name of Sensitive plant, in so far as it is ap-
tZ“4]| plied to this species, is liable to mislead. There is but
avery distant relationship between the Sensitive Pea and the
sensitive plant of poetry. The species which suggested Shelley’s

beautiful verses, beginning,

“A sensitive plant in a garden grew,”

is the Mimosa pudica, a native of the more tropical regions of the
American continent, and outside of the limit of the United
States. Even in its sensitive features there is very little relation
to the true sensitive plant, for its closing motion when touched
is very faint indeed. The writer has often brushed severely
against it, without being able to detect any of the irritability of
its namesake, although after many minutes have elapsed the
leaflets seem partially closed. If, however, a branch be plucked

from the parent stem, the leaflets rapidly close. It has been a
(173)

174 CASSIA CHAMZECRISTA.— SENSITIVE PEA.

.
question whether Longfellow had this plant in mind when in
“ Evangeline ” he says:

‘As, at the tramp of a horse’s hoof on the turf of the prairies,

Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking Mimosa.”
It is doubtful whether the real mimosa has the very sensitive
nature the legend implies, but it certainly could not be true of
the Cassea Chamecrista, Poets do not always draw their inspi-
ration directly from nature. Their minds are influenced by
what they have read, as the minds of many other people are. At
any rate, in no way is our plant

“Like the Mimosa shrinking from the blight of some familiar finger,”

as Whittier puts it; and only that it is as bad to change a name
in general use as to give a misleading one in the first instance,
it would hardly be worth while continuing its “sensitive ” appella-
tion. It has been called “Partridge Pea,” but this name has
been given to other plants, and is therefore still more misleading.

The botanical name, Cass7a or Casza, in old works, is a very
ancient one, and is met with in the writings of Dioscorides and
Theophrastus; but, judging by the description of Pliny, the cele-
brated Latin writer, the plant that originally bore the name can
scarcely be anything like our plant, and is believed by some
authors to have been something akin to the sandal-woods. The
name in connection with the present genus appears to have
originated with Tournefort, as Casse; and with a slight change in
orthography, was adopted by Linnaeus, as we have it now. The
specific name Chamecrista was the generic name given to the
plant by Rivinius, a botanist who flourished about the end of
the seventeenth century, and before the binomial system was
established. Thus, we still begin the name with a capital, which
indicates that it once represented a proper or generic term.

The genus is an unusually extensive one, embracing, perhaps,
three hundred species, and having representatives in every
quarter of the globe but Europe. They are chiefly tropical,
and it is probable that those which are found in the temperate

CASSIA CHAM-AECRISTA.—SENSITIVE PEA. 175

regions are immigrants from more southern climes, during the
long ages past. Of the immense number that inhabit the
American continent, less than a dozen have advanced into the
limits of the United States; and some of these, as for instance C.
Occidentalis, perhaps within comparatively recent periods. If,
however, our Cassta Chamecrisia was originally tropical, it has
become a famous traveller, for it has made itself at home in
every part of the Union, east of the Rocky Mountains, up to
Iowa, and Massachusetts. Prof. Porter, indeed, found it grow-
ing near Denver, where, in all probability, it ventured since the
advent of civilization to Colorado, and it is a good illustration of
its travelling capacities. It will, no doubt, soon establish itself in
that hot region, for in the East it flourishes best in dry, gravelly,
or sandy places, showing no signs of dissatisfaction, except that
in the middle of very hot days the leaves droop a little, recover-
ing, however, very soon after the sun’s decline from the meridian.
N. P. Willis, in his poem, “The Shunamite,” says, that when
Hagar went forth with Ishmael—
“Tt was a sultry day of summer time,
The sun poured down upon the ripen'd grain,

With quivering heat, and the suspended leaves
Hung motionless.’””

And had this scene been laid in the United States, our Cassza
Chamecrista would, undoubtedly, have been one to do justice to
the poetry of that sultry day.

The specimen from which our drawing was made is of
Massachusetts growth, and is very much smaller than when found
further south; but itis selected as enabling us to give a complete
plant on one plate. In the South it is very bushy and somewhat
trailing ; and it grows remarkably vigorous, even in poor, sandy
soil. For this reason it has been used for sowing and ploughing
down as a “green manure” in barren ground, and in this capacity
has become quite famous. It varies very much in regard to the
bushy or erect habit in different locations, and, indeed, in many
other respects, chiefly in regard to the spots on the petals of the

I 76 CASSIA CHAMAECRISTA.—SENSITIVE PEA.

flowers, and the hairiness or smoothness of the leaves and seed-
vessels. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey the plant is very
smooth in most cases. In Southern Illinois and Missouri the
more hairy forms prevail. With all allowances for variation, it is,
however, not probable that the colored plate No. 107, of the
“ Botanical Magazine,” and named Cassia Chamecrista, is really
this species, as the shape of the seed-vessel, uniform through all
the changes of other characters in our American plant, is very
different in that drawing, as also are some other characters.

The family of Cass¢a has been celebrated through the medical
properties of Cassta acutifolia, known in pharmacy as the Alex-
andrian Senna, and it is believed that our large-flowered Sensi-
tive Pea partakes, in some degree, of the purging character of
its relative.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1£. Upper portion of a Massachusetts plant. 2. The annual
root. 3. Seed-vessel nearly mature, from a plant growing in Pennsylvania,

A> FLALE 4p

Fx at RIP ARS Vis
TYMNOGE \

GYMNOGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS.
CALIFORNIA GOLD FERN.

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES.

GYMNOGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS, Kaulfuss.—Fronds densely tufted, six to twelve inches long,
dark chestnut-brown, glossy, nearly naked; fronds from three to four inches each way,
deltoid; lower pinnze very much the largest, deltoid, unequal-sided, the others lanceo-
late, deeply pinnatifid, with oblong obtuse lobes; texture sub-coriaceous, powdery varying
from deep orange to white. (Eaton’s Ferns of North America; and Botany of Wheeler's
Expedition.)

I the end of the last century there were few large genera
AY: of ferns but Acrostichum, Polypodium, Asplenium, Pierts
and Adiantum. But the number of species increased to such an
extent that it became a matter of convenience as well as of a
more perfect study to look for systems of classification which
should unite only those forms that were structurally allied, and
yet break up the overloaded genera as they were constructed at
that time. The introduction of the natural system of Botany
helped the study of classification, though indeed the ferns as they
stood in the artificial system of Linnaeus composed one of his
most natural classes. Still with the introduction of the natural
method, chiefly through Jussieu, the classification of ferns into
genera was made dependent on little more than the form or
position of the sori or fruit dots on the frond. Thus to have
round sori made a PolyPodium, in right lines an Aspleniun, in
marginal lines a Pleris, and jn terminal sub-circles an Adiantum.
It was at length found that the manner in which the fruit dots
opened was uniform in evidently allied forms, and further that the
manner in which the veins forked or were developed also had

great similarity in groups that might be divided ee

178 GYMNCGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS. —CALIFCRNIA GCLD FERN,

genera, and with some other characters of more or less impor-
tance the great family of ferns was divided into numerous
genera, and their study much simplified in consequence. Still
division has been carried further than sound dividing characters
perhaps warrant,—certainly beyond the point that natural appear-
ances in the species grouped into genera seem to demand; and
while there have been over five hundred genera described by
various modern authors, it is probable there are really but one-
third of that number which would stand criticism from a truly
natural point of view. Our genus Gymnogramma was taken
from Acrostichum in 1811, by Desveaux, a celebrated French
botanist of the early part of the century, and chiefly because
the fruit was not only in right lines, but was characterized by
the absence of an indusium or membrane, which usually seems
to cover in part the sporangia. It was from this peculiarity that
the name Gymnogramma was formed; gymnos being a Greek
word for naked, and ¢7vamma, writing or lines; that is, the lines
of fruit being naked. The species are somewhat numerous, but
chiefly inhabit tropical regions. Only two enter the limits of
the United States. Of these only our present subject has ven-
tured far within its borders, and this is found from along the
Pacific coast from Central America north to Vancouver’s Island.
It was first discovered, like so many other of our western species,
by the Vancouver expedition, and named Gymnogramma tri-
angularis by Kaulfuss, who described the ferns collected on this
voyage ia his “Enumeration Filicum,” published in Leipsic in
1824. Our knowledge of it is therefore comparatively recent,
and we are only now beginning to find that several supposed
distinct species of various authors belong to it. Sir W. J.
Hooker, in his “Species Filicum,” says, “it is remarkably uniform
in its form and ramifications,” but specimens from different col-
lectors in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia, show the variations usual in well-known ferns.
Mr. Nuttall has specimens from San Diego, California, which he
thought deserving of a distinct specific name. He labels it G.

GYMNOGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS.—CALIFORNTIA GOLD FERN. -179

vescosa, and this Mr, Eaton, in a note attached to the specimen,
proposes to retain asa varietal name. Specimens from the woods
of the Columbia of what Mr. Nuttall seems to have regarded
as the normal form have small and rather narrow fronds in pro-
portion to the length of the stipe. Some specimens from Mrs,
Elwood Cooper, of Santa Barbara, have fronds with stipes near
a foot in length, and very broadly triangular outline, this some-
what triangular form suggesting its specific name. In speci-
mens collected by Dr. Edward Palmer from Guadalupe Island,
off the coast of California, the stipes are not more than two
inches long, with the frondose portion of about the same length.
In this, as in many other species of Gymnogramma, the under
surface is covered by a powdery exudation, and this varies in
the specimens in the herbarium cited from deep golden yellow in
Mrs. Cooper’s specimen to silvery in those from much farther
north.

Many ferns prefer wet places, while others seem as well fitted
especially for dry situations. Though this species would be
included in the latter class, it is not insensible to the advantages
of moisture. Dr. C. C. Parry, who collected it in California, once
told the writer of this chapter that it grew in great abundance
in the shelter of rocks and edges of ravines, where it could
be well moistened by the early winter rains. In southern Cali-
fornia he usually found it growing in matted clumps, with fronds
of various sizes and degrees of development according to the
season or location, all coming up among the remains of stalks of
previous seasons. In dry weather they all curled up and exhibited
little but the yellow powdery under surfaces, and from these it
takes its common name of ‘Gold fern” in California. Another
friend, Dr. C. L. Andrews, of Santa Cruz, writing of the ferns of
that part of California, also refers to its moisture-loving pro-
pensities as a condition of growth. He says, “Gymnogramma
triangularis is found in all shady places where there are cliffs,
some moisture, and a rocky debris with vegetable mold. It
clings loosely to the soil, and grows where mosses and liver-

180 GYMNOGRAMMA TRIANGULARIS.—CALIFORNIA GOLD FERN.

wort abound, It seems to grow largest in sandy earth among
decaying leaves. In summer and fall (our dry season) the
leaves curl up into little balls. But with the first rain they seem
as fresh as ever, probably from a new growth.” These facts
will very much assist those who may endeavor to cultivate it.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE. 1. A full-sized plant. 2. Under surface of mature frond. 3.
Enlarged pinnule, showing arrangement of the sporangia. 4. Pinnule, showing the upper

surface.

LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS.
SCARLET TRUMPET HONEYSUCKLE.

NATURAL ORDER, CAPRIFOLIACEE.

LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS, Aiton.—Leaves oblong, evergreen, the upper ones connate-perfoliate ;
flowers in nearly naked apikes of rather distant whorls; corolla trumpet-shaped, nearly
regular, ventricose above. Stem woody, twining in the same direction with the sun. The
distinct leaves in the wild plant are elliptical or almost linear; the connate ones but one
or two pairs. Corolla of a live scarlet without, and yellow within. (Wood’s Class-Book
of Botany. See also Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and
Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States.)

‘ ue NDER the names of Honeysuckle and Woodbine there
ANZ are perhaps few families of plants better known through

the works of the poets and other polite writers. All who refer
to them have generally united in regarding them as emblems of
affection, and any allusion to them in poetry is usually in con-
nection with this sentiment. Joaquin Miller, in “First Love,”
describing the memory of an early passion, says:
‘She stands as she stood in the glorious Olden,
Swinging her hat in her right hand dimpled;

The other hand toys with a honeysuckle
That has tip-toed up and is trying to kiss her.”

But much of the poetry of the Honeysuckle refers to its aid in
giving the cosy character to an English cottage, and to the
adornment of arbors and bowers. In his advice to young
damsels, not to believe too easily what every wooer tells
them, Thomson, in his “Seasons,” says:

“Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,

While evening draws her crimson curtains round
tg a
Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.”

(181)

182 LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS.—SCARLET HONEYSUCKLE.

Nearly all our own poets, when they refer at all to the Wood-
bine or Honeysuckle, keep this embowering character especially
in view. Bryant, in the “Unknown Way,” asks of the strange
path—

Guest thou by nestling cottage ?
Goest thou by stately hall, 2
Where the broad elm drvops, a leafy dome,
And woodbines flaunt on the wall?”

and, in the “Evangeline” of Longfellow, we are told that—

“ Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer
Stood on.the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady
Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it.”

It must be confessed, however, that our poets have either had
their imaginations influenced by European literature or by Euro-
pean experiences, for our native species have not the rampant
habit of the European, and most of the honeysuckles and wood-
bines of American horticulture, which help us to make umbrageous
bowers, come to us from China or Japan; and when we see the
we have little but
the name to connect them with the plants of which the poets

’

woodbine on the American “nestling cottage,

sing. But the names carry us back a long way into history.
By the ancient Greeks and Romans, as we learn from Pliny, the
Honeysuckie was known as the Ferzclymenon. Literally, this is
“rolling or twining around,” and is equivalent to the modern
Woodbine. Honeysuckle seems a puzzling word to modern in-
vestigators. Dr. Prior says, in his “Popular Names of British
Plants,” that the name probably belonged to some other plant,
and was “transferred to the woodbine on account of the honey-
dew so plentifully deposited on its leaves.” But the account
given by Green, the old English herbalist, seems to offer a better
reason, He says: “In the evenings some species of sphinges, or
hawk-moths, are frequently observed to hover over the blossoms,
and with their long tongues to extract the honey from the very
bottom of the flowers, A considerable quantity of the nectareous
juice may sometimes be discerned in the tube. Insects that are

LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS. —-SCARLET HONEYSUCKLE, 183

too large to penetrate into the narrow part of the tube, and have
not a long tongue like the sphinges, to reach the juice, make a
puncture towards the bottom and so fairly tap the juice.” It may
be remarked here that the word “ Honeysuckle,’ by all the
earlier writers, seems to have been confined to the flowers of

the Woodbine plant.
“A honeysuckle,
The amorous woodbine’s offspring,”

as Ben Jonson expresses it, and this would leave Dr. Prior’s ex-
planation quite out of the question. It is worthy of remark, by
the way, that Green notes the habit of the larger insects of boring
into the corolla from the outside, an insect-practice supposed to
be among the discoveries of these modern days.

Another name of somewhat ancient times was Capr7folium, and
this has been taken as a name for the whole order—Caprifoliacce.
In like manner this name puzzles the commentators, and is thought
to be derived from Latin words signifying a goat and a leaf,
“because goats are fond of the leaves.” ‘This is an unlikely
reason. A popular name for the Woodbine among some of the
English peasantry who know nothing of Latin is “Caprifoly;” and
itis probably, therefore, a corruption from some forgotten source.

The botanical name, Lovzcera, credited to Linnzus in our text-
books, seems to have been first applied by Ray, a noted English
botanist who flourished towards the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury; and it commemorates Adam Lonitzer, who wrote several
large folio volumes on the medical properties of plants which
were published in Frankfort between 1551 and 1564. He was
born at Marbourg in 1528 and died in Frankfort in 1586. The
name appears in Plumier’s works in 1703, and he is often credited
with the authorship of the name.

Independently of its family history and generical associations, our
Trumpet Honeysuckle has abundant points of its own to interest
the student and the mere lover of wild American floral scenery.
There is scarcely anything more lovely than this species when it
gets a chance to clamber over low bushes on the outskirts of

Q

To4 LONICERA SEMPERVIRENS,—SCARLET HONEYSUCKLE,

woods. It is very often found, however, in the deeper shade,
and then its flowers are few. In these cases, even in Pennsyl-
vania where it is occasionally found, its trailing stems retain the
leaves green all the winter, though Dr. Gray says “leaves de-
ciduous in the North,” referring probably to cultivation. The
plant is not found wild beyond Southern New York, whence it
extends down to Louisiana and Florida, and Mr. Butler, in the
first volume of the “ Botanical Gazette,’ notes that it is found
across the Mississippi in Arkansas. Usually it favors low, moist
places, but Mr. Howard Shriver, in the same magazine, states
that it is found on cliffs of the New river in Virginia. Most of
the species of Honeysuckle have the mouth of the corolla divided
into two distinct portions or “lips;” our species is peculiar in
having the mouth but slightly notched, and the divisions mostly
regular. It is from this that it derives its name of “Trumpet
Honeysuckle.” From its bright color it is also called quite fre-
quently the “Scarlet Coral Honeysuckle.” It will be interesting
to compare the manner of flowering with that of many other
species of Honeysuckle. In some the leaves as well as the
flowers are perfectly formed at eachnode. The flowering is then
said to be axillary. In our species the leaves are nearly or en-
tirely suppressed, and this makes the flowering appear in terminal
racemes. It is further remarkable that in the case of those species
which have this terminal character the upper leaves generally
unite, and often increase in size. We may also note that when
this union occurs there is much difference in the veining of the
leaves, and this gives color to the view of some German mor-
phologists that it is the growth of the leaf-blade that decides the
number and position of the veins, and not that the veins are first
formed as if they were the skeleton, the lcaf-blade in form and
character being then made to suit the veins.

CHEI 91

VE Glas

Me

PLATE 46.

CHELONE GLABRA.
TURTLE-HEAD.

NATURAL ORDER, SCROPHULARIACE-E,

CHELONE GLABRA, Linnzeus.—A foot or two feet (or in Illinois six to seven fect) high; leaves
from narrowly to rather broadly lanceolate (‘uur to five inches long, four to twelve lines
wide), gradually acuminate, serrate with sharp appressed teeth, narrowed at the base into
a very short petiole: bracts not ciliate: corolla white, or barely tinged with rose, an inch
long. (Gray’s Syxoptical Flora of North America. See also Gray’s Manual of the
Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s flora of the Southern United States,
and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.)

HIS very pretty wild flower will interest the collector, not

Lees only because it is pretty, but also because it will furnish
ratedal for good botanical lessons, especially in that part of
botany which deals with the evolution of form and the relation
which plants bear to one another in systems of classification.
Taking this latter topic first, it may be well to assume that a large
number of our readers know what is a Feztstemon, for they form
not only a very extensive genus, but some one or more of them
are found in most parts of the territory covered by our work—
the United States. Besides this, the /ezéstemon has been
improved by skilful florists, and thus has become a very popular
garden plant, and afforded many besides those who go out to
gather wild flowers, the opportunity of being acquainted with
them. The natural order to which the Prréstemon, Chelone,
and many other American plants belong, Scrophulariacee, has
usually two pairs of didynamous or twin stamens, one pair
generally above the other ; but occasionally some of the number
are abortive and only two stamens appear. On the other hand,
there is at times a tendency to add to the normal number four,

by the introduction of a fifth stamen. In /2zéstemon this fifth
(185)

186 CHELONE GLABRA,—TURTLE-HEAD,

stamen is produced to the length and of the strength of the four
perfect stamens, though we can see it has still imperfect anthers ;
but the fifth in this family being so conspicuously prominent,
even to this extent, earned for the genus its botanical name
Pent- (or fifth) stemon. Now, our present subject, Chelone (pro-
nounced in three syllables), is much like Peméstemon in this
respect, though, while the fifth or imperfect stamen is developed
to the full length in Fzés¢emon, it is much shorter than the other
four in our present subject, and botanists dwell much on this in
noting the differences between the two. There are also some
little differences in the peculiar compression of the corolla in
Chelone, and in the general appearance; and, after all, it is a
question whether it is not rather because of the general appear-
ance of the plant and flower that it is kept separate from Pemt-
stemon, for very few persons, unacquainted with the niceties of
botanical classification, would at first take it for a Pemdstenzon.
There is, however, one little point which seems characteristic and
sufficient to decide them, and that is in the seed, which has always
around it a broad membraneous wing, never to be found in Pezd-
stemon, so that this, with the general distinct appearance, might
be relied on to distinguish. But even the general appearance is
not always to be relied on, for the “Botany of the Californian
Geological Survey” tells us that there is a plant in Oregon so
exactly like a Fenéstenon, that one has to note the membraneous
border to the seeds before knowing that it is a Chelone. On the
other hand, there are some /ezéstemons that have been thought to
be Chelones, and the whole teaches us on how slender founda-
tions often stand what we think are very distinct genera.

As to how one form may grow out of another, a hint may be
gathered from a communication by Mr. Henry F. Young to the
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for 1872. As already
noted in Che/one, the fifth or false stamen is much shorter than
the others, but Mr. Young found a flower in which were five per-
fect stamens, This isa very important fact as showing the line
of descent. In this genus and most of its allies the calyx is five-

CHELONE GLABRA,—~-TURTLE- HEAD. I 87

parted ; and the corol'a, though of but one petal, is also usually
five-lobed. This shows that the normal structure of the flower
is pentamerous, or formed on a plan of five, and that it is only
by a union or suppression of parts that we have the forms we
see. Even when we come to study the species as well as the
genus, the relation of one form to the other is found so close as
to make the line of distinction very uncertain. In the earlier
times Linnzeus described two species. One, our present Chelone
glabra, is thus described by Willdenow, “leaves lanceolate, ser-
rate, petiolate ; the upper ones opposite.” The other C od/igua
is said to have “leaves lanceolate, serrate, petiolate opposite.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that succeeding botanists were in
doubt about them. Professor Wood does not refer to C. cdligua
even as a synonym, as Dr. Chapman in his Southern Flora, and
Dr. Gray in his Manual of 1867, do,—but the latter in his
“Synopsis” of 1878, again carries it back to its Linnzan position
as a distinct species, giving a character not mentioned by Will-
denow, that in C odd7gua the bracts are “ciliolate,” while in our
species he says they are “not ciliate,” meaning perhaps “cilio-
late,” or having a few short or scattered bristles along the mar-
gins of the bracts, which are probably variable after all. Lindley
and Mooré’s Treasury of Botany says, “The so-called C. e/abra
is now regarded as but one of the forms of C. od/igua,” but if
one name has to be dropped, it should be the latter in accord-
ance with the practice of American botanists. A. L. de Jussieu,
a distinguished French author of the end of the last century, and
one of the fathers of modern Botany, tells us C. e/adra was the
earliest name, and that the character of the whole genus was
drawn from this species. That the species has “many forms”
American botanists know. Mr. Coleman finds one in the South-
ern Peninsula of Michigan with leaves only between a quarter to
half an inch wide, which he calls variety “linifolia.”. The flowers
are also variable in color. It is often pure white, and again it is
frequently found of the rosy tint we have given in our plate,
which is from a Pennsylvania specimen.

188 CHELONE GLABRA,—TURTLE-HEAD,

Linnaeus is usually credited with the name, but he tells us
he adopted it from Dillenius, an author who flourished just
before his own time. Tournefort, however, seems to be the
original author, who wrote about 1700, and who, according to
Milne, named it Chelone, “from the Greek, meaning a tortoise,
from the figure of its seeds, which are round, compressed, and
begirt with a membraneous rim or border.” Clayton, and others
of his time, regarded it as one of the Digztahs or Fox-gloves ;
though Gronovius, the editor of Clayton’s work, refers it cor-
rectly to Tournefort’s Chelone.

Lindley and Moore, already quoted, say, comparing it with
Pentstemon, “the form of the corolla in this genus is very dis-
tinct, the broad-keeled upper lip and scarcely open mouth giving
it some resemblance to the head of a tortoise or turtle, to which
feature are due both the scientific appellation and the popular
American name of ‘Turtle-head.’”” Our American botanists do
not seem quite sure about this. Professor Wood, after giving
the Greek name, simply says, “from the appearance of the
flower,” and Dr. Gray, though he translates the Greek to “tor-
toise,” adds, “the corolla resembling in shape the head of a rep-
tile,’ which may include many things besides a tortoise. The
peculiar-looking seed, as already noted, is the chief distinctive
mark between Fentsfemon and Chelone,and as this must have
been in mind by the botanist describing it, gives some reason
for concluding Milne to be right as to the original intention of
the name. The “American common name” probably came from
the botanists, for we have rarely heard those who live among the
flower give it any name.

Dr. Gray says it grows “from Newfoundland to the Saskatch-
ewan and south to Florida.” It is across the Mississippi, how-
ever, in Arkansas, though it has not been found in Kansas or
Nebraska, It bears garden culture well. Among the common
names given in books are “Snake-head,” “Shell-flower,” and
« Balmony.”

188 CHELONE GILABRA. —TURTLE-HEAD.

Linnaeus is usually credited with the name, but he tells us
he adopted it from Dillenius, an author who flourished just
before his own time. Tournefort, however, seems to be the
original author, who wrote about 1700, and who, according to
Milne, named it Che/one, “from the Greek, meaning a tortoise,
from the figure of its seeds, which are round, compressed, and
begirt with a membraneous rim or border.” Clayton, and others
of his time, regarded it as one of the Digztals or Fox-gloves;
though Gronovius, the editor of Clayton’s work, refers it cor-
rectly to Tournefort’s Chelone.

Lindley and Moore, already quoted, say, comparing it with
Pentstemon, “the form of the corolla in this genus is very dis-
tinct, the broad-keeled upper lip and scarcely open mouth giving
it some resemblance to the head of a tortoise or turtle, to which
feature are due both the scientific appellation and the popular
American name of ‘Turtle-head.’” Our American botanists do
not seem quite sure about this. Professor Wood, after giving
the Greek name, simply says, “from the appearance of the
flower,” and Dr. Gray, though he translates the Greek to “tor-
toise,” adds, “the corolla resembling in shape the head of a rep-
tile,’ which may include many things besides a tortoise. The
peculiar-looking seed, as already noted, is the chief distinctive
mark between Pentstemon and Chelone,and as this must have
been in mind by the botanist describing it, gives some reason
for concluding Milne to be right as to the original intention of
the name. The “American common name” probably came from
the botanists, for we have rarely heard those who live among the
flower give it any name.

Dr. Gray says it grows “from Newfoundland to the Saskatch-
ewan and south to Florida.” It is across the Mississippi, how-
ever, in Arkansas, though it has not been found in Kansas or
Nebraska, It bears garden culture well. Among the common

names given in books are “Snake-head,” “Shell-flower,” and
“ Balmony.”

PLATE 47

BA.

~\
J)

NDIA SERIC

SE

WN

10

als
L

TOWNSENDIA. SERICEA,

SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER.

NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITA,

TOWNSENDIA SERICEA, Hooker.—Stemless, from a simple or much branched caudex, one to
two inches high; leaves spatulate-linear, silky canescent, acute, one-nerved, twelve to fifteen
lines long, erect, surrounding and partly concealing the heads (eight lines long), which are
sessile or on very short peduncles; scales of the involucre subulate-lanceolate, pubescent,
green in the centre, purplish towards the tip; margins scarious, lacerate-ciliate; rays long;
narrow, not spreading; pappus of the disk white, about as long as the corolla, pappus of the
ray of several unequal subulate bristles, much shorter than the achenium and one or two
long ones (sometimes nine or ten) similar to those of the disk flowers; achenium hairy,
hairs minutely capitate. (Porter’s Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado, See also Torrey and
Gray’s Flora of North America.)

(

SSHIINCE the railroad progress of the few years past has
brought the Rocky Mountain country so near to us, and
many of the most intelligent class of tourists make Colorado their
summer home, the desire to become acquainted with its natural
history and especially its botany is very great. Its flora is indeed
interesting, not merely for its own sake, but also because its
Alpine vegetation affords us in some degree a knowledge of a
more northern flora) The present species for instance, an
inhabitant of the Rocky Mountains, is also an Arctic plant, and
was indeed first made known to us by the naturalists connected
with the first voyage to the Arctic seas, of the subsequently
unfortunate Sir John Franklin; and it is described in Dr. John
Richardson's account of the plants collected on that expedition,
published in 1823. Dr. Richardson thought it might be a species
of Aster, to which it is somewhat related, occupying a position
between Asterand Zrigeron. Its true distinction from Aster was

perceived by Sir William J. Hooker, who, in 1829, published the
: (189)

Igo TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.—SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER.

“Flora Boreali-Americana,” wherein he described and named it
as Towrsendia, Its general appearance leads one to suspect
some difference from Aster; and the globular involucre (Fig. 2)
strikes us at once when we go into details, as in Aster it is ovoid
or oblong. Scme authors note a difference in the relative length
of the pappus in the ray and disk florets, it being shorter in the
latter. Dr. Masters, in the “Treasury of Botany,” says of Zowyz-
sendia, “the fruits are hairy, and the pappus is in one row, scaly
in the outer, hairy in the inner fruits.” The difference in the
pappus seems to be the great point of comparison. Sir W. J.
Hooker says, in the work referred to: “This highly interesting
plant, no less on account of its habit than its pappus, deserves
to be separated from As¢er, of which it was by Richardson con-
sidered a doubtful species.” When speaking of the pappus par-
ticularly he says: “ Pappus of the ray composed of several unequal
subulate bristles much shorter than the achenium, and one or
two long ones nearly resembling those of the disk flowers.” In
regard to this matter of the pappus Nuttall says, in the “Ameri-
can Philosophical Society’s Transactions” for 1834-35, “Achenium
obovate, margined, and flatly depressed, sericeous (silky) with a
numerous connate series of white silky pappus almost plumose,
barbellate, and remarkably attenuated above.

We have thought it important to call the collector's attention
to what these different authors say of the pappus (the silky hair
coming up from the tip of the seed at # in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4),
because it will be seen that though there is something evidently
distinct in its characters from Aséer, no two of the writers exactly
agree, and our Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 would scarcely be recognized
as coming under the description of any one. The bristles “much
do not show at all; rather, instead

”

’

shorter than the achenium’
of “one or two” being long in the ray flower (Fig. 3), they are
all “resembling those of the disk” (Fig. 4); being but little
shorter. Our drawing was made from a Colorado specimen,
kindly furnished by Prof. Sargent, of the Cambridge Botanical
Garden, but the same character as figured in our plate exists in

TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.—SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER. Igl

dried natural specimens. We were at first disposed to regard
this development of the pappus in the ray flowers abnormal in
this respect,—but it may be noted that in Mr. Watson’s Botany
of King’s Expedition, a species 7. scapfigera is figured, in which
also there seems nothing but a little difference in length to dis-
tinguish the pappus of the disk from that of the ray.

Our plant would probably be regarded as the same with that
described in the “ Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club,” vol. 6,
p.163,as 7. Wilcoxtana, by Prof. Wood, who says of it, “ pappus
alike in the ray and the disc florets, consisting of about thirty
white bristles,’ and he remarks that it is confounded in Herba-
riums with 7. sericea. Since the discovery of the species we
now describe by the Franklin expedition, so many new forms
have been found from the Arctics to New Mexico, and so nearly
like each other, that botanists are almost afraid to name and
describe them as new species, and, therefore, we have thought it
might help the student, by dwelling on this point relative to the
pappus, to prepare him to look for probable variations.

Among the interesting points connected with our plant is one
quoted by Hooker in regard to the time when the buds are
formed. In most composite plants these are developed after the
growth of the leaves in the spring; Sir W. J. Hooker says “the
bud is formed in the autumn,” and what Dr. Richardson further
observed in the living plant I find to be characteristic of all the
specimens in this collection, that “ the florets of the ray are mostly
involute, rarely expanded, and always narrow, nearly of the same
color with the pappus and inconspicuous; the flowers indeed
never fully expanding,” in which again the student will see some
differences in our plate.

Though with apparently so wide a distribution through the
centre of our territory, it does not seem to be often met with by
collectors. It was found by Nuttall, in 1834, when on the Wyeth
expedition, he says ‘on the Black Hills towards the source of the
Platte in latitude 41°, Flowering in April and May probably, as,
according to Dr. Richardson, the flower is formed in the autumn

192 TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.—SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER.

and expands the following spring.” Dr. C. E. Parry found it in
1861 in the Rocky Mountains, about the head waters of South
Clear Creek ; and about the same time and near the same place
it was found by Hall and Harbor. Mr. Brandegee has collected
it in southern Colorado, and as already noted it has been found
in the Indian Territory, if Prof. Wood’s 7. Wdlcoxiana is the
same thing.

Townsendia was so named by Sir W. J. Hooker in honor
of David Townsend, cashier in the same bank in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, of which the celebrated Dr. Darlington was Presi-
dent, and who, though he wrote nothing, was one of the best
botanists of his time, and had an especial knowledge of Astera-
ccous plants. In this especially, as well as for a free distribution
of specimens to European botanists, they were glad in this
pleasant way to make acknowledgments. He died at West
Chester, Pennsylvania, December 6th, 1858, in his seventy-
first year; preceding but by a few years his life-long friend and
companion, Dr. Darlington, who died on the 22d of April, 1863,
in his eighty-first year—the two having rendered West Chester
famous in the botanical annals of America, and both being com-
memorated in distinctively American plants which bear their

names,

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLaTe. 1. A full-sized plant. 2. Side view showing the almost
globular involucre. 3. Ray floret with pappus and young achene enlarged. 4. Enlarged
disk floret. 5. Pollen grain enlarged 270 times. 6. Side view of a branch, with side view
of flowers, showing its proportionate length with the leaves.

SERIES IL Vou. 1 |

POLYPODIUM FALCATUM,
SICKLE-LEAVED POLYPOD, OR LIQUORICE FERN,

NATURAL ORDER, FILICES,

POLYPODIUM FALCATUM, Kellogg.—Frond deeply pinnatifid, segments alternate, long lance
falcate, alternate, acuminate, doubly serrate, upper and lower divisions smaller by degrees,
terminating above in a long slender acumination. Sori numerous, twenty to twenty-four
in‘two rows, one on each side of the mid-rib, rachis glabrous, from one to one and a half
feet in height. Root compressed tuberculate, one-fourth to one-eighth inch broad, greenish
russet color, branching laterally, radicles numerous, rhizoma often covered with scales.
(Dr. Kellogg in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, for December,
1854; see also Zaton’s Ferns of North America.)

N a recent work on a curious order of water plants known
wg] as Chara—‘Characeee Americane’”—the author, Dr.
Allen, quotes a distinguished student of the lower orders of
vegetation, Alexander Braun, as saying: “So long as I knew but

few forms of the Gymopodee, their distinction was easy, but
when it became necessary to distinguish sixteen or eighteen
forms, I concluded to consider them all varieties of a single
species.” This extract from one of the most celebrated of
German botanists shows that even those who have penetrated
the deepest into the mysteries of plant life have no definite idea
of what determines a species. If some accident had destroyed
all the individuals comprising a dozen of the intermediate forms,
so as to leave only the extremes, we see that Braun would have
regarded these extremes as distinct species; but because the
intermediates had not been destroyed, and thus affording a
chain of close relationships, they are all regarded as of one
species.

Now most botanists have had the experience with ferns that

Braun had with Characee. The less we know of any species the
(193)

194 POLYPODIUM FALCATUM.—SICKLE-LEAVED POLYPOD.

more likely we are to make new ones. The ferns of the Atlantic
States have been so well studied that any novel form is soon ~
referred to some well-known species ; but the ferns of the Pacific
coast are not so well known, and thus when some peculiar-look-
ing individuals are met with it is uncertain what the botanist will
do with them. Our present plant is as yet one of these doubt-
ful plants. It was first brought to notice by Dr. Kellogg, who
exhibited specimens to the California Academy of Sciences,
December 11th, 1854, from Mr. Swan, of Shoalwater Bay, Wash-
ington Territory, and who named and described it as Polypodium
falcaium at the meeting following, December 18th. Next we
find it in Professor Eaton’s hand from specimens received from
Lieutenant A. V. Kautz, of the United States army, who collected
it in Southwestern Oregon. Professor Eaton seems not to have
detected the identity of these specimens with Kellogg’s descrip-
tion, and so gave ita new name and description as /olypodium
glycyrhiza in “Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Arts”
for November, 1856 (vol. 22, p. 138), and not in July, as he states
in his “ Ferns of North America.” Then the writer of this was
furnished with excellent fresh specimens by Mrs. Fanny E. Briggs
from LaCentre, Washington Territory, from which our drawing
was chiefly made; and the only other record of any specimens
that we have at hand is in the “check list of North American
Ferns in Davenport Herbarium of the Massachusetts Horti-
cultural Society,” where specimens are reported as from “Oregon,
1875; and from Washington Territory, 1876, Joseph Howell.”
It will ke seen from this how very little is known of this fern,
and from this it comes about that some authors write of it as
“probably a variety of Polypodium Calrfornicum,’ others as
“probably a variety of Polypodium vulgare,’ and others, as for
instance Professor Eaton, as a distinct species. It is not our
purpose to illustrate what may finally be considered mere
varieties in our “Flowers and Ferns of the United States,” as
no doubt many of the Pacific forms will come to be regarded; so
we give this because, with Professor Eaton, we believe its specific

POLYPCDIUM FALCATUM. —SICKLE-LEAVED POLYPOD. 195

distinctness will be finally agreed upon. It will be seen from our
plate that it agrees with Polypodium Californicum in the pellucid
veins which thicken as they terminate (Fig. 3, a). From Poly-
podium vulgare it differs in the thin, papery texture and glaucous
hue of the fronds, and the falcate form of the divisions in the
more vigorous specimens (Fig, 2). Beyond all this there is one
very important difference if Professor Eaton’s account under
“P. glycyrliza” be correct. As every fern collector knows, he

has not to wait

sf A . till the light of sming
Comes from the sun, with zephyrs and with showers,
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow,
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm,”

as Percival would say, before he can collect perfect specimens of
Poelypodiun vulgare for examination, for it is an evergreen, and
is even in best condition in the winter season if the frosts are not
too severe and the place of growth too exposed; but this species
Eaton says has annual fronds, and this from their thin, filmy
character is probably correct. That itis nearer to P. Caltfornicum
than to P. vulgare we find also suggested by one of our own cor-
respondents, Dr. C. L. Andrews, of Santa Cruz, California, who,
under date of April 16th, 1878, says: “Polypodium falcatum |
take to be a variety of our P. Californicum (tntermedium), having
the habit of P. vulgare.” Of this habit Mrs. Fanny E. Briggs
says in the Gardener's Monthly for March, 1879, “it grows in
moss on trees and logs with FPolypodium intermedium, and is
known as ‘ Wild-Licorice.’’
Eaton that it has “aerial rootlets, having a sweet flavor like that

i

Lieutenant Kautz tells Professor

of licorice.” In his ‘Ferns of North America,” and wherein he
expresses his opinion that it is a distinct species, Professor Eaton
says he “has not seen the root stocks.”

Dr. Kellogg, in the original account in the “Proceedings of
the California Academy of Sciences,” says: “It is highly
esteemed as a medicine, both among the natives and others,

thought to be antisyphilitic, also used in the preparation of

{96 POLYPODIUM FALCATUM. —SICKLE-LEAVED POLYPOD.

tobacco, imparting to it a sweetish licorice flavor. The Polypody
upon oak trees was famous among the ancients for the cure of
melancholy and madness.”

It is epiphytic on old decayed trees, stumps and roots, and
clefts of rocks,—indeed we should imagine much as the /o/y-
podium vulgare is. It probably grows rather stronger than the
species last named. Mr. Lunzer, our artist, who was kindly per-
mitted to examine a specimen under cultivation in the Cambridge
Botanic Garden, Massachusetts, found some of the fronds with
their stipes about eighteen inches long. The experience in this
garden leads to the belief that the plant will adapt itself easily
to cultivation, and the facts we have given in regard to its native
locations will help the cultivator.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE. 1. A rather young plant from Washington Territory furnished
by Mrs. Fanny E. Briggs. 2. A full-grown frond from a specimen grown in the Cam-
bridge Botanic Garden. 3. Portion of pinnule enlarged, showing the position of the sori
on the veins, and the thickening of the ends of the (pellucid) veins at a.

tS

aes
rere
Pest
a
See,

‘ é
Seah

ot “f

de

REALS
ae

be