BOTANICAL SURVEY OF NEBRASKA. loj 



kind, upon the flowers of the females at any time. In piibHshing last 

 year my A. neglccta (Pitt iii. 173), I made brief mention of these facts. 

 But, apprehending the possibility of oversight of some kind on my 

 own part, I have wished to direct others to these plants, in hope that 

 this matter of parthenogenesis in such highly organized species may 

 be either confirmed or disproven. 



Again, some of our most common violets have a long season of 

 apetalous flowering, after their vernal period of petal if erous bloom is 

 past. Such later and apetalous flowers are usually spoken of as cleis- 

 togene, by which it is meant that their ovaries are fecundated by pollen 

 while yet in the bud. Now in many such violet species the later and 

 apetalous flowers are actually subterranean ; and in carefully examin- 

 ing these at every stage in their development, I have failed to find a 

 single pollen grain. They do not even develop anthers, but only cer- 

 tain very feeble and utterly sterile rudiments of such an organ; yet 

 from these evidently unisexual and wholly subterranean flowers most 

 of the seed, if not all of it, by which these species are propagated, is 

 produced. 



Physiological research is something quite apart from my own pre- 

 ferred lines of botanical investigation ; and I am not very strongly set 

 for the defense of this proposition that these and perhaps other com- 

 mon plants are parthenogenetic. If other readers of the Plant World 

 and students of plant life, would, during the season now opening, ex- 

 amine some of the plants I have mentioned, in reference to these par- 

 ticulars, I should be glad to know the results, be these what they may. 



REPORT UPON THE PROGRESS OF THE BOTANICAL 



SURVEY OF NEBRASKA.* 

 By Charles E. Bessey. 



THE Botanical Survey of Nebraska in charge of the Botanical 

 Seminar of the University of Nebraska, has been formally 

 under way for somewhat more than five years. Before that 

 time it had been carried on by the members of the Seminar in 

 an informal way, for seven or eight years under the general direction 

 of the head of the Department of Botany of the University. Since 

 the assumption of the work by the Seminar much field work has been 

 done in many parts of the state b}^ members, and others who have 

 been induced to act as correspondents. The results of this field work 



* I. Read before Section G of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

 August 10, 1897. 



