1916] Goodspeed-Brandt : Notes on Trillium 11 



iutrodiiced into tlie cultures, but we have experienced considerable 

 difficulty in keeping them alive. 



The rootstocks have, in practically all cases, been grown outdoors 

 in pots. It was impossible even to approximate the soil or environ- 

 mental conditions from which the different rootstocks had been taken 

 and all were grown in rather light garden soil and under identical 

 cultural conditions. The rootstocks have been repotted yearly, 

 usually in August. The conditions under which the garden cultures 

 have been maintained are the best at our command, but are certainly 

 not the most favorable and may even be the determining cause of 

 certain observed conditions to be described below. 



Perhaps the most significant fact concerning the nature of the 

 species of Trillium under observation through field and garden 

 studies has to do with the occurrence of undeveloped flowers in those 

 plants which appear to be completely flowerless. This matter is to 

 be taken up separately in the second paper of this series and here 

 it is not necessary to do more than mention the points established. 

 Where a considerable number of Trillium plants grow together in a 

 relatively limited area, a glance reveals the fact that some are in 

 flower and that other plants, perhaps by far the larger number, 

 appear to be entirely without flowers, while a few exhibit small, 

 unopened buds in the center of the whorl of leaves. It has, however, 

 been found that every plant contains a flower of a greater or lesser 

 degree of differentiation or development. At one extreme are entirely 

 undifferentiated primordia of microscopic size and at the other are 

 the buds mentioned above which never open and in which the petals 

 are always white and early withering, the pistil suppressed or the 

 ovary lacking ovules, and the anthers without functional pollen. 

 Between these two extremes we have found all intermediate stages. 

 Study of the garden cultures has aided in pointing out the significance 

 of this situation. In only a few instances in the cultures has it been 

 possible to keep the shoots produced from the rootstocks in a normally 

 flowering condition from year to year. Thus, though the great 

 majority of the 150 rootstocks under observation bore a flowering 

 shoot or shoots when collected or during the growing season previous 

 to collection, we have at present scarcely a half dozen rootstocks 

 producing flowering shoots. Usually in the year following collection 

 the shoot or shoots produced contain undeveloped flowers. 



Our field studies have in part been concerned with an investiga- 

 tion of the various degrees of sterility exhibited by var. giganteum, 



