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LEITNERIA FLORIDANA. 
BY WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
While collecting in the lowlands of southeastern Mis- 
souri, in November, 1892, Mr. B. F. Bush discovered a 
small tree growing abundantly in the swamp, and collected 
specimens of the trunks, branches with staminate catkins, 
and a few old leaves. Notwithstanding the incompleteness 
of the specimens, Mr. Bush shrewdly located the plant in 
Leitneria, a monotypic genus heretofore known with cer- 
tainty only from Florida; and a comparison with speci- 
mens of L. Floridana in the Garden herbarium, collected 
many years ago in Florida by Dr. Chapman and Dr. D. V. 
Dean, showed the correctness of the generic determination, 
though certain differences in minor points were noticeable. 
In April, 1893, he again visited the locality and collected 
other material in leaf and with half grown fruit; and 
shortly afterward Mr. Henry Eggert gathered it with nearly 
mature fruit. 
So far as we now know, the tree occurs in the deep 
swamps of Butler and Dunklin counties, where it is asso- 
ciated with plants of distinctly southern range, such as 
Taxodium distichum, Acer rubrum Drummondii, Nyssa 
uniflora, Planera aquatica, and Polygonum densiflorum. 
As I have convinced myself by personal observation at 
Kennett and Neelyville, it grows in rich swamp soil in 
sloughs and similar places, which never become dry and 
where there is usually from six inches to two or three 
feet of water; and Mr. Bush states that along the St. Francis 
River it is most frequent in water from three to five feet 
deep, where it is rooted in the basal mass of Polygonum 
densiflorum, the common swamp smartweed of that region, 
which occurs in dense growths often forming a floating 
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