62 
Osmunda cinnamomea, t., var. frondosa. 
= Plate Ly. 
In 1876 Miss E. G. Knight and myself found at Pelham 
Manor, Westchester County, N. Y., a single plant of O. czxnamo- 
mea with fronds of the so-called variety, frondosa. 1 had looked 
from year to year in the same neighborhood for other specimens, 
but failed to find any until last June, (1885). I then found a 
group of scattered root-stocks,—I think some five or six in all, 
bearing modified fronds of the ordinary type, that is with the 
lower pinnz sterile and the upper fertile. Amongst these was 
one which has some of the middle pinnz fertile, and those above 
and below sterile, exactly as in O. Claytoniana, L. In fact, had 
I found it alone, I should have taken it to be that species. It has 
however, as the accompanying sketch shows, the apices of the 
pinne acuminate. In Eaton’s “ Ferns of North America,” I find 
mentioned two forms of the variety—with the upper or the 
lower pinne respectively, fertile,—but nothing is said of the form 
before us. I therefore think it worthy of especial record, and 
would ask: Does this indicate conclusively that O. cinnamomea . 
and O. Claytoniana are varieties of one species? Or, as these 
two species were both growing in this instance, as they often do, 
near together, could these sports be by any possibility the result 
of hybridization ? 
I took specimens of the two sports from the same root-stock. 
EpWARD H. Day. 
Proterandry in Veltheimia, 
A plant of Veltheimia viridifolia, growing in my house, is 
now in full flower and exhibits proterandry. After the blossoms 
have been open several days, the style, which till then had been 
shorter than the stamen, elongates and protrudes from the mouth 
of the perianth. At first I thought this a plain arrangement for 
cross-fertilization, but now I am not so sure of it. My wife 
points out to me that the pollen is shed indeed before the stigma 
can receive it, but by a shrivelling or contraction of the perianth, 
is held in a mass, and may be caught by the pistil in its passage 
or precipitated upon it by gravity. The inflorescense is racemose 
or ascending. W. W. BAILEY. 
