200 THE ILANT WOP.LD. 



NOTES ON CURRENT BOTANICAL LITERATURE. 



Shisfeo Yamanouchi contributes to the Botanical Gazette for 

 June a paper on " The Life History of Polysiphonia VioJacca," 

 in which he shows that there is an alteration of generation in 

 this seaweed. 



Howard Frederick Weiss, in the same magazine, gives the 

 results of a detailed study of the bark of sassafras. 



In .-Ipplcfon's Magazine for August, Frank French has a popu- 

 lar article of botanical interest entitled " Plant Kinships." The 

 author writes of the relationship between the skunk cabbage and 

 the jack-in-the-pulpit of the bogs and woods, and the AntJiuriuni 

 and calla lily of the florist's window. He describes the tropical 

 pitcher plant Xepcntlies, of the same family as the American 

 pitcher plant Sarrace)iia purpurea: and compares the gorgeous 

 Mediiiilla magnifica of the Philippines with its diminutive relative, 

 deer-grass, Rhe.via z'irgiiiica. 



In the August Garden Magazine W'ilhelm Miller has written on 

 " The Cultivation of Hardy Orchids." He says: " No one really 

 knows how to grow hardy orchids. There are sixty species in the 

 northeastern United States and not one of them will ever become 

 a common garden plant. Most of them are too small, and all re- 

 cjuire special conditions. Hundreds of people can make them live 

 for a year or two. A few people have colonies of a dozen plants 

 that have flowered regularly for five or six years. No one seems 

 to have naturalized them on a large scale. Unless we can supply 

 those special conditions it is worse than folly to transplant orchids 

 from the woods. It is vandalism." Among the nine best hardy 

 orchids are mentioned the showy lady's slipper, Cypripediiim 

 spectabile; large lady's slipper, C. puhescens; rattlesnake plantain, 

 Goodyera puhescens; and the small lady's slipper, C. parvifolium. 



