214 Rhodora [SEPTEMBER 
the white flowers were remarkable for their large size, exceeding 
those of any other of our species, especially its companion of these 
woods, the extremes of each barely connecting. 
D. diphylla is our only species to which the term “rootstock 
continuous” has been applied, in apposition to “jointed” as noted 
for all the other species. Studies in both field and herbarium seem 
to show that the latter term has been loosely applied. Each annual 
segment of most so-called “jointed” rootstocks may be a joint, but 
in those of the plants observed in Sherman and in all others known 
from our region, with one exception, there is not the faintest indica- 
tion macroscopically or by fracture of a fixed or definite place of the 
union between these enlarged parts of the rootstock. 
Just prior to the close of a field meeting of the Connecticut Botan- 
ical Society, held at Rainbow, on the Farmington River, June 6, 1903, 
I was particularly fortunate in finding a colony of D. maxima. In 
rich soil along the banks and alluvial bottoms of a woodland stream 
_and nearly concealed by luxuriant later vegetation, were quantities of 
this rare and little understood species, chiefly noticeable for the 
array of bright yellow foliage like spots of sunshine filtered through 
the leaves overhead. 
Careful search was instituted for the best the colony afforded, in 
company with Mr. B. B. Bristol. Although occasional plants bore 
pods of about mature size, few of these seemed destined to mature 
seeds owing to the aestival decadence prevailing among their kind. 
This colony seems to occupy a narrow area approximating a length 
of ten or twelve rods. 
In this species the rootstock has been specially noted as “ jointed.” 
These plants seem to be fairly representative of the species, but 
there are no joints in any proper sense of the term. In fact, the 
rootstock is made up of constricted fusiform portions in a manner 
similar to the Sherman plants, but tubercled in the axils of prominent 
incurved teeth. A noteworthy and distinctive character seems to be 
the lifelong persistence, near the base of each segment, of the pre- 
morse remains of former stems and leafstalks and more conspicuous 
than any other appendages. 
Since this appeared to be the second ! Connecticut station for this 
species and, as it happens, in the same county of Hartford, studies 
were made to include specimens from the recorded station. These 
! See RHOD. V, 168—169. 
