202 Rhodora [OcroBER: 
and taking me to the edge of a bank pointed down to what looked to 
me like a large patch (perhaps twelve feet by six) of Myriophyllum 
tenellum Big. such as I often used to see by the ponds amongst the 
hills between Almanac Pond and Sankaty Head — “Could any of 
that growth have been T'illaea?" was my quick question. I went out 
soon afterwards to investigate thoroughly, but my previous visits 
there were made some fifty years before, and I now found, to my sor- 
row, the low shores of these ponds invaded by a sturdy growth of 
cattails which has probably completely filled the water by this time. 
I return to Hummock. This bank was some ten or twelve feet high. 
We went down— it was very wet below, although at a considerable 
distance from the pond edge — and found the bright green sod com- 
posed of " very small tufted plants an inch or two high, rooting at the 
base," just as the Manual says, but the numerous flowers of a purer 
white than I expected to see. The well-formed fruit in all stages was 
as abundant as the flowers and made the specimens complete and 
perfect, all that could be desired for the herbarium. I cut out sods 
for my botanical friends, but the late Mr. L. L. Dame who was at his 
summer home in Siasconset was the only one who could have received 
the plant in all its freshness. The last time I saw him, the year before 
he died, I asked him if he remembered it, “Perfectly” he replied. 
“The pretty little flowers that starred the sod, and the fine fruit?” 
“Perfectly” was again the reply. No human being has, to my 
knowledge seen the patch again. I have looked for it myself a num- 
ber of times in company with keen and quick-eyed searchers to whom 
I have described what I wanted, but we never found it. 
In 1902 Mrs. Robinson went out with me again; she not only could 
not find the spot but she seemed to have forgotten it and the plant 
too. She took me to the edge of the water and after search amongst 
the floating weeds drew out what she said was Tillaea. I was amazed, 
but I later found that it is so called by other botanists. 
Tillaea simplex Nutt. is described in every edition of Gray's Manual, 
in Gray's Field, Forest and Garden Botany and in Wood's Class-book, 
and always as a low tufted plant with white flowers rooting in the 
mud. Oakes found it rooting in the mud. Now these three botanists 
surely never knew of the aquatic form which differs from their plant 
in many striking particulars. It grows in shallow water, though 
sometimes two feet deep, rooting at the bottom, but reaching up to the 
surface; it is apt to break off and then, entangled with other water 
