1922] Nelson,—Muscari comosum in Oregon 209 
About forty plants were counted, scattered among the furrows over 
an area of perhaps one hundred yards square. The farm-house was 
about 300 yards south, on the opposite side of the highway. No 
other dwelling appeared in the immediate vicinity, though a house 
had once stood on the same side of the road, about a hundred yards 
beyond the Keene homestead, the site being marked by an old cellar 
and a solitary specimen of Salix babylonica. Along the roadside near 
this tree was another interesting plant that sometimes appears 
mysteriously in western Oregon—Reseda alba L. None of the Keene 
family could offer eny explanation for the presence of the Muscari, 
as they had moved to the farm only a year before. It had of course 
attracted their attention, and the father persisted in calling it “death 
camas," although the resemblance to Zygadenus venenosus was by 
no means marked. 
Although the plant appeared fairly well established, there seemed 
reason to fear that its location in a cultivated field might make its 
tenure decidedly precarious. It was therefore without any strong 
expectation of finding it again that I made a second visit to the spot 
on May 27 of the present year (1922). The field had been again 
sown to oats, which were already breast-high; but scattered every- 
where among the grain over the original area were the brilliant 
violet-tipped clusters of the Muscari. No other weed except the 
omnipresent grain-field pest of the Northwest, Centaurea Cyanus, 
seemed as well established. An attempt to dig out some specimens ` 
showed that the plant had been clever enough to send its bulbs 
down far enough to escape the plow, and that the problem of survival 
had therefore been met and solved. The bulbs that had not been 
more than six inches below the surface at the time of the first visit, 
had gone down to at least 30 inches in the cultivated ground. We 
found that the Keene family had transplanted some of the bulbs, 
and we brought home a few others for our own gardens. 
It is even more difficult to explain the plant here than at the Phila- 
delphia station. Almost anything may be expected to appear in the 
miscellaneous refuse that collects about a large city; but how such a 
plant found its way into a remote rural neighborhood is hard to 
understand. If the seeds were introduced in seed-oats, why has it 
not appeared elsewhere? It has never been reported in cultivation 
in this part of Oregon—even M. botryoides is much less common here 
than in the East, and has never been found growing spontaneously. 
