1911] Chase,— Arrhenatherum elatius 6 tuberosum 207 
they have found a black birch, and lumbermen everywhere from the 
Adirondacks to New Brunswick are sure that they have two birches 
which they are loth to believe can be age variations only. With 
them it is a gray or silver birch when the bark on the trunks can be 
removed like that on the paper birch, but when the back is furrowed 
with age it is another kind; and it must be admitted that in this case 
there is little about the bark of a large log to indicate its relationship 
with a young tree of the same species. There is no commercial dis- 
tinction, at least in the north, between the timber of the black and 
yellow birch, and birch floors are invariably called cherry birch floors 
but are usually if not always made of yellow birch. In fact the black 
birch in New England never grows to a size suitable for using in any- 
thing except in small dimensions such as chair-stuff, baby-wagon 
spokes, etc. The black birch is hardly a northern tree and the area 
covered by it in Vermont and New Hampshire is quite limited. It 
grows in Western Vermont and is frequent in Burlington; and it is 
found in the lower valleys of the Connecticut and Merrimack and in 
southeastern New Hampshire. Its range in the provinces of Quebec 
and Ontario I do not know, but it is abundant at and about Ottawa. 
Its range as well as its abundance in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
and Iowa is unknown. In short the two birches B. lenta and B. 
lutea have been so confounded by lumbermen and botanists that no 
dependence whatever can be placed on any published statement as to 
either range or frequency of the black birch in the north, northeast 
or northwest.— W. H. BLaNcHarp, Westminster, Vermont. 
ARRHENATHERUM ELATIUS ĝ TUBEROSUM IN AMERICA.— In a 
recent number of Ruopoma (vol. 13, p. 9, Jan., 1911) the writer 
described and figured the subterranean organs of a grass supposed 
to be Cinna arundinacea L. During the past spring a number of 
specimens of these clustered corms were sent to the Department of 
Agriculture from various stations on the southern Atlantic coastal 
plain. The frequency with which these were received suggested 
some recently introduced species. Mr. Cooper of Decatur, Georgia, 
who first sent the puzzling underground organs was asked to send 
flowering specimens. This he kindly did, and the plant is found to 
be Arrhenatherum elatius 8 tuberosum (Gilib.) Halac. (Avena tuberosa 
