THE PLANT WORLD 193 



A number of years ago we fouud specimens of a monocotyledonoiis 

 plant not in bloom, and showing no tendency to bloom. These speci- 

 mens were from a jierennial root which was covered with a fibrous coat- 

 ing and had many slender rootlets, the portion above ground consist- 

 ing of two to several lanceolate parallel-veined leaves, a foot or more in 

 length, acuminate at both ends, the petiole being slender and about half 

 the total length of the leaves. The plant grew in rich woodlands, and 

 was of fre(juent occurrence. Its identity was puzzling for quite a while 

 until finall}^ we found a colony in early July in southeastern Iowa in a 

 rich soil surfaced with sand in rather old woods. There must have 

 been a hundred of them to a square rod, and a solitary one in the cen- 

 ter of the colony had sent up its stem and was beginning to bloom. 

 The means were now at hand to unravel the mystery, and the result 

 was that the heretofore stranger became known as Verafrum WoocUi. 

 Specimens in our herbarium are from Decatur countj^, immediately 

 west of Corydon, Wayne county, the locality mentioned by Professor 

 Pammel; also from Aj)panoose county, immediately east of Wayne 

 ^county, and from Jefferson county, in southeastern Iowa, the locality 

 where we first found the plant in bloom. 



The results of our observations are: 1. The plant is of frequent 

 occurence in southern and southeastern Iowa. 2. The supposed rarity 

 of the species niixy be accounted for by the tact that the plant seldom 

 blooms, and the tiowerless forms are not recognized. This habit is 

 analogous to that of Erytlironiwn albidum, which gives a thousand or 

 thereabouts of flowerless forms to a flowering one. Professor J. C. 

 Arthur reported the species from Des Moines county, southeastern 

 Iowa in Volume III of the Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, the locality being given as Burlington, which report 

 we believe to be the first reference to the occurrence of the species in 

 Iowa, Professor Pammel's report the second, and this the third. — T. J. 

 and M. F. L. Fitzpatrick, Iowa City, Iowa. 



Additional Notes on the Habitat of the Mesquite in Oklahoma. 



In a short note in The Plant World for April, 1901, I stated that 

 the mesquite {Prosopis c/Iandulosa) was found in southwestern Kansas 

 and on the salt flats of the Cimarron river in northwestern Oklahoma, 

 but that in these regions it always appears stunted and dwarfed. Dur- 

 ing the past summer I have had opportunity to examine the plant in 

 the newly-settled Kiowa and Comanche country, and in Greer county 

 in the southwestern part of the Territory. In this region the mesquite 

 is quite abundant on the flat lands both north and south of the Wichita 

 mountains. It is rarely found near a stream, but ajjpears to prefer the 

 dry and almost barren plains comijosed chiefly of a stift" red clay soil. 



