12 THE PLANT WORLD 



Briefer Articles. 



THE THUNDER FLOWER. 



Science, as every one knows, is very often the interpreter of legend, 

 as often almost as it is the destroyer of myth and superstition. A notable 

 instance of this happy fate has just been discovered by the Garden in 

 relation to the humble and familiar wild flower, the stonecrop iSeduin 

 tedoruni), a flower which is known in the lake region as the thunder 

 flower, in Belgium as diinder blomen, and at Arras 2iS flcur de tonnerre. 



In the pages of the Pharmaceutical Journal our contemporar>' has 

 discovered the following interesting explanation of this ordinary^ name : 

 Two pharmacists, it is related, were once walking together, when they 

 stopped to admire a fine profusion of the stonecrop on the roof and the 

 outbuildings of a primitive farm house. The tenant, an aged but hale 

 and hearty woman, informed the men of science that a building was pro- 

 tected from thunderstorms by the stonecrop, and she told how that very 

 house was saved by its intervention. " In my grandfather's time," she 

 said, "the lightning struck the roof and turned the thunder flowers all 

 to a jelly, but the hou.se was saved, and that is why it is called the 

 thunder flower." In defense of this pleasing theorj^ which sounds so 

 very much like a legend, the Garden points out that the stonecrop is 

 very probably a natural lightning conductor, seeing that it is succulent 

 and full of water. And another authority adds : "There is no reason in 

 life why the explanation should not be correct." The ubiquity of the 

 name certainly adds weight to the theory and justifies a decisive scientific 

 opinion on the matter. — The London Globe. 



TARO alias TANIER. 



After an age of deplorable confusion regarding the nomenclature of 

 two of the principal tropical root crops, it seems to be finally settled that 

 none of the Taro varieties are of the genus Xanthosoma and that none of 

 the true Taniers, or Yautias, are Colocasias or Caladiums . The apparent 

 interchange of the local names of these plants, together with their similar 

 growth habit, caused the old botanists to jump to the conclusion that 

 both were the same species. Innumerable mistakes have been made in 

 catalogues and lists, Colocasia almost always doing double duty ; but, 

 thanks to the taxonomic courage of Mr. O. F. Cook, the Yautias and 

 Taniers now rest securely within the genus Xanthosoma and, although 

 botanists can scarcely hope to see the flowers of the cultivated species, a 

 few years more will probably find the twenty-five or more species definitely 

 separated. 



