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side of which, subtended by the inner of the two root leaves, is 
a small scaly bud, containing the flowering scape of the coming 
season, the buds of which are so minute as only to be discernable 
with the aid of a lens. Smilacina racemosa shows the termi- 
nal panicle, only the lower buds of which can be distinguished 
even with the aid ofa lens. Mazanthemum Canadense, however, 
presents these buds in much more recognizable form, being at 
least a thirty-second of an inch in diameter. Clintonia borealis 
has a scaly bud at the end of a root stalk, usually at least six 
inches long. In this bud are found the flower buds of the next 
season distinctly formed in all their parts. Some of the buds 
slightly exceeded a sixteenth of aninch in length. Nevertheless, 
the parts were sufficiently well formed to permit me, who not 
living near its haunts, was up to that time ignorant of the system- 
atic position of the plant, to analyze these flowers which were to 
blossom next spring sufficiently well to correctly determine its 
Liliaceous character, and thus to permit its identification. 
Trillium erythrocarpum possessed flower buds a quarter of an 
inch long and all its parts distinctly developed. Arisema 
triphyllum presented the so-called “ flower” in well developed 
form, an eighth of an inch long. The spathe was as long as the - 
spadix, and on the latter the minute female elements could be 
readily detected. 
The second set of observations were made during the middle 
of September, in the vicinity of Mt. Greylock, Berkshire County, 
Massachusetts. At the northern end of the Bellows Pipe Valley, 
Caulophyllum thalictroides was found, containing in a scaly bud 
the leaves for the next season’s growth, and a dense cluster of tiny 
buds, about a fortieth of an inch in diameter, and which were 
destined, when lengthened out, to form the loose panicle of next 
spring. Mitella diphylla reverses the rule in regard to the inflor- 
escence of most spring-flowering plants, by being not directly 
terminal. The flower clusters are found in lateral elements of 
the scaly bud on opposite sides of a terminal leaf bud which 
forms the most important part of the scaly bud. In these lateral 
buds occur the two leaves which are usually formed half way 
up the scape of the plant, and the cluster of minute flower buds, 
rather covered with hairs, which were destined to terminate these 
scapes of lateral origin. 
