WHAT ARE THE HABITATS OF SCUTELLARIA PAR- 



VULA OF MICHAUX? 

 By Byron D. Halsted. 



(N connection with the editorial note in the February issue concern- 

 ing the more careful record upon the herbarium label of the 

 localiiy of the specimen, it may be written that in a recent study 



of the little Scutellaria parvnla Michaux, there was occasion to 

 compare the manuals of the United States upon the matter of habitat. 

 Gray's works generally state that the little skull-cap grows upon 

 " sandy banks " (Flora of North America and Manual), " sandy, moist 

 places" (School and Field Book). Wood's Botanist and Florist states 

 "fields;" Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, "dry 

 ground;" and Britton and Brown's Illustrated Flora, "in moist, 

 sandy soil." 



In New Jersey the species is not recorded in Britton's Catalogue 

 of Plants, but is found in considerable abundance in one place where 

 the writer has watched it with much interest for several years. It 

 grows upon an otherwise almost bare knoll that consists of a red shale 

 rock, the exposed surface of which has become disintegrated into a 

 soil that dried out very completely after every rain, and from the ex- 

 posure to the winds is blown away by the breezes, to some extent at 

 least, during any dry spell. Here the dwarf skull-cap flowers and 

 forms seeds when possibly less than three inches high, the minute 

 stems sometimes bearing only one or tv/o pairs of very small leaves. 

 Under ground, however, these same pygmy plants may have hori- 

 zontal shoots reaching several inches, possibly a foot in length, and 

 provided with numerous pear-shaped enlargements giving what Dr. 

 Gray calls " a long moniliform string of small tubers." These tubers 

 are more like bladders than ordinary tubers, and instead of containing 

 starch or other reserve materials, are spongy and seem well adapted 

 for storing water. 



The special point of this note is to seek definite information as to 

 the native haunts of this plant. If it grows in " moist places," as two 

 leading manuals state, the writer is anxious to know the fact that he 

 may, if possible, get samples of the same for a study of the " tubers " 

 that may form where there might seem to be no great advantage in 

 conserving moisture in the comparatively large sponge-like swellings 

 upon the underground stems. vSpecimens will be taken from the bare 

 arid knoll above mentioned to a rich bottom land for further study. 



Rutgers College. 



