1916] Goodspeed-Brandt : Notes on Trillium 15 



individual asexually and is correspondingly a consistent producer of 

 large numbers of viable seeds. In plate 3. figure 5. is sho^^•n the 

 extreme expression of this vegetative method of propagation peculiar 

 to the western sessile. Fourteen plants, three of which do not appear 

 in the photograph, were produced by the parent rootstock by lateral 

 budding to form offsets. In the mass of rootstocks shown it was 

 possible to trace in many cases the original connection between the 

 rootstocks, since the older partially decayed portions of the rootstocks 

 were held in position by the heavily matted roots. The difference 

 in the size and thus in the age of the different offsets, the fact that 

 the whole mass was very compact, that the offsets were quite 

 symmetrically arranged about the parent rootstock in the center, the 

 obvious connection between the offsets and the parent and finally 

 the absence of seedlings in the neighborhood seems to leave no room for 

 doubt that this group shown in plate 3, figure 5, is the result solely of 

 asexual reproduction. Further than this we have noted in the 

 field a large number of rootstocks with four to six small, recently 

 produced offsets still attached to the parent and other larger plants 

 nearby which very apparently had been derived from this same 

 parent. The production of small offsets is shown on the rootstock in 

 plate 3, figure 6. The appearance of the plant there illustrated brings 

 up another matter which is of importance in this connection. Just as 

 T. sessile var. giganteum produces new plants asexually in consider- 

 able numbers, so from the "crown," or covering of the growing 

 point, of each rootstock more than one shoot is often sent up annually. 

 In plate 3. figure 6, the parent rootstock is seen to have produced at 

 least five vigorous flowering shoots from buds formed during the dor- 

 mant season at the bases of the scale-like, sheathing leaves of the crown. 

 T. ovatum, on the other hand, rarely sends up more than a single 

 shoot from a rootstock, just as it almost never produces new indi- 

 viduals asexually. The morpohology of the rootstock and especially 

 the structure of the growing apex is to be taken up in detail in a 

 forthcoming paper of this series. 



In the garden cultures we have undertaken a study of the nature 

 of the teratological variations which are of such frequent occurrence 

 in the west coast sessile. In our cultures three different rootstocks 

 have produced four-leaved shoots in some one given year, the 

 abnormality never having appeared before or thereafter in shoots 

 from the same rootstocks. Fasciated shoots appear, however, in some 



