289 
ample and efforts has incited us all to.closer acquaintance with our 
beautiful woods, lakes, &c. She discovered Botrychium Lunaria and 
Botrychium matricarizefolium in this County, and we hope to find 
Asplenium ebenoides also. Mrs. Barnés discovered the Botrychium 
simplex, in all its varieties, in the Adirondack region near Section 
No. 4, also Ophioglossum vulgatum, at Oneida, N. Y. 
Several members of our Club wish to purchase rare herbarium 
specimens of North American ferns. Correspondents may address 
“The Rust Botanical Club,” corner Green and Hawley Streets, 
SYRACUSE, N. Y. A MEMBER. 
§ 290. Aletris.—Some time since I collected, on the road from 
Atsion to Tuckerton, I think at Bass River, between the two bridges, 
a peculiar form of A/etris aurea, Walt. It seems to be intermediate 
between 4. farimosa and A. aurea, L. On referring it to Prof. 
Watson, he marks it A. aurea (?), and asks for a study of it while in 
flower, and desires mature specimens. Will Botanists collecting in 
that vicinity please look for it ? 
My brother collected at Maama, (or Miama,) Dade Co., Florida, 
a plant which Prof. Watson identifies as Carica Papaya, L. It is 
thoroughly naturalized, so far as I can judge by the representations 
of several unscientific friends who have lived there. 
FRANKLIN, N. J. H. H. Ruspy. 
§ 291. A Gigantic Aroid from Sumatra.—Not long since the 
announcement was made to the Linnean Society, that Dr. Beccari 
had discovered in the Island of Sumatra a gigantic Aroid, the bulb 
of which measured five feet in circumference, while the much divided 
leaf of the plant covered an area of 45 feet in circumference! More 
recently a fuller account of the plant has been received from Dr. 
Beccari, and from this we gather the following particulars : 
In external appearance and in distribution of color the new 
Aroid is much like the Amorphophallus campanulatus, the shape of 
the spathe being nearly the same. As to its generic character, the 
discoverer considers it to be nearly intermediate between the two 
genera Conophallus and Amorphophallus. The specimen examined 
possessed a spadix nearly 6 feet long, and this not including the length 
of the scape, which was 20 inches long and 3 inches thick (about the 
dimensions of the leaf-stalk). The scape was of a green color, marked 
with whitish orbicular spots. The largest diameter of the spathe was 
nearly 3 feet and its depth about 28 inches; its shape was campanulate, 
with deeply toothed and crumpled edges. The deeper portion of the 
interior was of a very pale greenish color, but the limb was of a 
bright blackish-purple hue. The outside of the spathe was pale 
green, smooth in the lower portion, but thickly corrugated and crisp 
above. The spadix, deprived of the spathe, measured more than 5 
feet ; for 8 inches of its length only it was covered with pistils under- 
neath and with stamens above them, the sterile organs being entirely 
wanting. The appendix was consequently reduced to a total length 
of about 4.3 feet, having at the base a diameter of 8 inches, gradually 
tapering towards a very obtuse apex. The ovaries were purple- 
colored, trilocular, or sometimes bilocular, with a single anatropal 
ovule in each cell; free, globose-conic shaped, tapering into a long 
