97 



not known there In our days.— Mr. L. M. Underwood has found 

 Zygadenus glaucus^ Nutt., growing in considerable abundance in 

 " Tamarack Swamp," two miles east of Syracuse. He would be glad 

 to furnish specimens of this rare plant in exchange for Orchidaceae. 

 The Syracuse Club has gathered Epipactis again this year. 



77. Notes from California.— As in my occasional botanizing, I 

 sometimes am able to make an observation new and interesting to 

 niyself, and, so far as I can learn, not yet recorded, I accept your gen- 

 eral invitation to ''communicate," and send you the following items ; 

 Double Flowers : While botanizins: at Whitewater, Wis., in the 



sprmg of 1876, I found quite frequent specimens of Thalictriim 

 anemonoides and Hepatica aaitilobawith double the normal number of 

 sepals; and in some cases, I thought I could detect indications of 

 two circles of floral parts', as if two flowers had a common torus A 

 few weeks ago, while botanizing here, on the mountains, I found a 

 specimen of Lilium rubescens on which was one well-defined twin 

 flower, with ten parts to the perianth, twelve stamens, and two pistils^ 

 proving beyond doubt the twin character of the blossoms. 



Rootstock of Erythronium grandiflomm. — While collecting the 

 above plant on the foot-hills here, I discovered that it has a very 

 delicately attached rootstock. 



Lilmm Humboldtii. — This plant, which is very abundant along 

 mountain streams here, frequently has one of its upper whorls of 

 leaves lengthened into a very perfect spiral, 



Pontederia cordata, — -This plant I find growing under cultivation 

 here; the owner says he collected it in this county, but I have not 

 seen it wild. I observe that as the flowers Avither, the stems bend 

 downward until the fruiting spike is immersed in the water, where 

 the fruit matures. I observed the same fact concerning it in Wis- 

 consin. 



Ricinus communis, — The castor-oil plant, which is an annual herb 

 in the Northern U. S., grows to be a perennial tree twenty feet high in 



Southern California. 



Poison Oak. — The poison oak of California, Rhus diver siloba (.^) 

 grows very abundantly everywhere on the foot-hills and mountain 

 sides. Though quite as poisonous in its effects upon human beings 

 as Rhus toxicodendro7i^ the horses and cattle here eat it with reHsh and 

 apparently without harm. Geo. R. Kleeberger- 



* Weaverville, Cal., July 27- 



78. Teratological Notes. 



I. — In the Horace Mann herbarium at Cornell University is a spec- 

 imen of Botrychium lunarioides which, besides possessing the usual 

 fruiting stalks, has two of the sterile segments replaced by fertile 

 divisions. 



Dichotomous fronds oi Aspidium marginale have several times been 



found by me at Ithaca. 



In 1879 I collected a "twin frond" oi Polypoditim incanumxw 



Alabama. The stipe branched near the middle. 



Supernumerary carpels were frequently observed on Acer Pseudo- 

 Platanus at Ithaca, the number of wings sometimes reaching five. 



