74 THE PLANT WOELD 



In working up a collection of beautifully preserved material from 

 the valley of the John Day River, Oregon, I have found what seems to 

 be the large sterile flower of a Hydrangea. It is composed of four 

 large, broadly obovate or nearly circular calyx-lobes which have a 

 spread of about 4 cm. The nervation of the lobes is perfectly preserved, 

 and is of exactly the type found in Hydrangea Japonica. In size and 

 shape it agrees very well with H. quercifolia of the eastern United 

 States, but not in nervation. 



This fossil was originally described as a species of Marsilia, the 

 leaf of which it much resembles, but was later placed under Porana, a 

 Convolvulaceous genus having a curious, leathery calyx. It seems, 

 however, to be much more nearly related to Hydrangea. 



Associated with this flower is a flora of over fifty species, all of 

 which have a very modern aspect. There are elms, maples, alders, 

 hornbeams, sumac, willows, oaks, a sycamore with leaves over a foot 

 broad, and among the conifers Glyptostrohus, Sequoia, a Taxodinm 

 hardly to be distinguished from T. distichum, and a Thuja. Perhaps 

 not the least interesting is what appears to be a species of bread-fruit 

 tree (Artocarpus). — F. H. Knowlton, 



The Mesquite in Kansas and Oklahoma. 



In the summer of 1897, while doing geological work in southwest- 

 ern Kansas, my attention was called to a thorny shrub unlike anything 

 I had seen in the State. It grew on the hillside just north of the Black 

 Hills, some eight miles southeast of Belvidere. The next summer I 

 pointed out the shrub to Dr. Lester F. Ward, who identified it as the 

 mesquite {Prosopis glandulosa Torr.), and published a notice of its 

 occurrence in The Plant World I: 48. The species has since been in- 

 cluded in Britton & Brown's Illustrated Flora, 3: 516. 



During the past summer while working with the Oklahoma Geo- 

 logical Survey, I had opportunity to observe the habitat of this plant 

 in northwestern Oklahoma In this region Prosopis was not observed 

 except in patches along the valley of the Cimarron river, where it some- 

 times becomes quite abundant. It prefers the poorest and driest soils, 

 and apparentl}^ those impregnated with salt. Almost without excep- 

 tion it was found in the red soil on or near salt flats. The shrub some- 

 times grows as much as ten feet high, but is always wide spreading and 

 apparently stunted. It bears a great profusion of pods. The mesquite 

 has also been noticed on the high hills of Clark county, Kansas, fifty 

 miles west of Belvidere, but here it is extremely dwarfed, rarely grow- 

 ing more than three feet high. I have never seen it north of the south- 

 ern tier of counties in Kansas. — Charles Newton Gould, University of 

 Oklahoma. 



