324 
found in Germany “a proportion considerably exceeding that of 
phanerogams generally. Now as it seems scarcely credible that or- 
chids should possess means of transportation across the sea in pref- 
erence to other plants, we must conclude that they inhabited the Brit- 
ish Isles before their separation from the Continent, which involves 
that they have occupied stations near the present coasts of Germa- 
ny or France previous to a great deal of plants that reached these 
coasts only subsequently to the formation of the Channel.’”’ He also 
adduces the fact that the British orchids belong to very different 
groups of the order, enhancing the argument for antiquity based on 
their geographical distribution. 
§ 330. Bud Variation in Bananas.—Fritz Miller writes (JVa- 
ture, June 12): “In my garden there is a large plant (planted about 
eleven years ago) of a variety of banana, distinguished by purplish 
stems and petioles, red fruits, and by a very peculiar flavor of the 
latter. From the centre of this plant, covered by the rotten stems of 
former years, there are now growing green stems, with green petioles; 
one of them has already produced fruits, which were green when im- 
mature, and yellow when ripe, and the flavor of which I found to be 
_ but slightly altered. . All the young stems growing from the circum- 
ference of the plant are purplish. May not many of the varieties of 
bananas have been produced by bud variation ?” 
: § 332. Plantago Patagonica, Jacq. ver. aristata, Gray.—The 
Rev. S. W. Knipe, of Delaware Water Gap, Pa., found this plant in 
Southern New Jersey, June 28th. He says: “I saw but one locality, 
that by the side of the road leading south along the west bank of 
Maurice River, about a half mile below Millville, Cumberland Co., 
N. J. he plant was abundant for a distance of a rod or two, and 
is no doubt well established there.” This is a very interesting discoy- 
ery, the nearest station that we have heard of being Illinois. 
§ 333. Antidromy.—Prof. W. W. Bailey, in the June No. of the 
Botanical Gazette describes the alternation in the convolution of the 
flowers on the same branch of Mahernia verticillata, LL. A similar 
case is that of Zechea, and probably other Cistaceae. But in this or- 
der, as is well known “the petals are convolute in the opposite direc- 
tion from the calyx in the bud.” What is not so well known is that 
in Lechea the calices of the different flowers on the same branch 
alternate in the direction of their convolution, so that we have in this 
