96 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



both warmth and sunlight to fully expand the corollas and 

 in their woodland haunts the flowers are seldom entirely open 

 until ten o'clock. 



The usual color of the corollas is white, l)ut the deep pink 

 veins of the petals give the flower a decidedly pink hue. Oc- 

 casionalv they are pink throughout and the writer has a 

 plant in his garden that is uniformlv deep rose-color. The 

 flowering stems spring from a roundish tuber-like stem deep 

 in the soil. This is edible and is said to taste like chestnuts 

 when boiled. ■ 



There are supposed to be tw^o species of spring beauty 

 in eastern America. The common one is Claytonia Vir- 

 ginica. It has slender leaves and niany flowers in racemes. 

 The second species is named C. CaroUuiana and is descrilx-d 

 as having broader leaves and fewer flowers. The writer has 

 found many plants with leaves up to nearly an inch broad, 

 but thus far has failed to find plants that looked sufficiently 

 different from C. Virgiuica to be regarded as a separate 

 species. If anv reader of this has C. CaroUuiana in his re- 

 gion, the writer would appreciate a leaf or flower-cluster. 



A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION 



By NoRMAX Jefferiks 



'T^Hl^ hope that Mr. Roger Sherman Hoar would furnish 

 -*■ corroborative testiuK^ny in .-upport of his claim to dis- 

 covery of blue dandelicMis or, after enlightenment or reflec- 

 tion, would confess either error or playful jest, is not sus- 

 tained by reading his latest article in the Aiuencan Botanist. 

 Mr. Hoar feels it necessary to reveal me as "by pro- 

 fession a creator and purvevor of side-sh(»w freaks, and a 



