58 Rhodora [APRIL 
I learned from my host and hostess upon inquiry that the Cypress 
Spurge was by no means unknown on the farm. This weed was first 
noticed there some six or seven years ago, occurring in a small patch 
on either side of the stone wall near one of the main entrances from the 
road, the spot where I first observed it. Thence it spread over the 
fields rapidly, though sparsely, and in two or three years had covered, 
at intervals of varying distances, an area of twenty acres. It was 
flourishing under the most varied conditions, as I found on examina- 
tion the next day, but was always heavily laden with fruit. In one 
piece of very barren, rocky soil it was perfectly at home, while the 
largest, thriftiest, and most recent colony that I found was in a part 
of the hay field that had been cut the year before, in 1908, and later 
in the summer plowed and fertilized, thus offering what I have always 
considered uncongenial conditions for the growth of this plant. Some 
weeks later Mrs. McMillan noticed a few specimens of the Euphorbia 
springing up here and there over this area, and they spread with great 
rapidity. This I realized on visiting the spot and I was astonished to 
see how the species had invaded a new territory and obtained so strong 
a footing in so short a time. The plants were large and vigorous and 
were loaded with ripe capsules to an extraordinary degree. On a 
single specimen, consisting of four stalks, there were, by careful count, 
eighty-eight capsules. That means two hundred and sixty-four seeds. 
The plants were growing very closely together and they covered an 
area of several square rods, while a net-work of root-stocks, a short 
distance below the surface of the ground, showed what a firm hold this 
species can secure when once it has found congenial conditions. This 
vigorous system of root-stocks is of course sufficient to maintain the 
Hooker’s Student’s Flora of the British Islands characterizing them as “smooth globose 
pale * * * almost white,” a search through the library of the Gray Herbarium has 
been made to ascertain what the various writers have said on this subject. The most 
satisfactory account and one which agrees very closely with the color of the Shelburne 
seeds is in Syme’s English Botany, viii. 108 (1873) as follows, ‘‘ Seeds quadrate-sub- 
globular, smooth, dim, ashy-grey, with a rather large suborbicular caruncle," In view 
of the very meagre statements that appear to exist on this question, seeds were sub- 
mitted to an expert in color, Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews. He describes the color as 
follows, ‘‘ The seed color is light bluish gray, to deeper violet gray, with slight surface 
iridescence under magnification in a good light; caruncle large, golden ochre.". The 
difference in the color of the individual seeds appears to be due to the varying degree 
to which the outer light gray somewhat friable coat of the seed is rubbed off, the inner 
layers being of deeper hue. The seeds, including the caruncle, are from 2.25 to 2.5 
mm, in length. The capsule is depressed globose with three rounded lobes, It is 3 
mm, long and slightly more in diameter. The surface is green, minutely roughened 
with whitish warts. 
