44 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



Fatsia horrida, the Devil's club, an inhabitant of the dense 

 forests of the Cascade Range, is formidable not only because 

 of its cruel prickles but also because of its rank and unpleasant 

 smell. It seems to belong in tropical forests rather than in 

 the Temperate Zone. 



Navarretia squarrosa, the skunk weed, fully lives up to 

 its name. The odor is so distinctly mephitic that the tender- 

 foot is sure that a "wood-pussy" has gone into action some- 

 where in the neighborhood. One peculiarity of this plant is 

 that it does not wait to be disturbed, but sends out its "fra- 

 grance" with delightful impartiality at all hours, especially 

 at night and in damp weather. A friend of mine insists that 

 the odor used to enter his college room in such volume as to 

 wake him from his slumbers at frequent intervals. It is quite 

 a shock to the Easterner to find that this plant belongs to a 

 family that in the East is bland and innocent — the Polemon- 

 iaceae. Another plant of this family, P olemonium elegans, a 

 high-mountain species, also possesses a very "loud" and dis- 

 agreeable odor. 



Two species of the genus Trichostema — T. oblongum and 

 T. lanceolatum, particularly the latter, locally known as vin- 

 egar-weed — bear the palm for sheer intensity of odor. I had 

 my first experience of this latter species after carrying a speci- 

 men around in a tin vasculum during a very hot summer 

 morning. The odor went right on generating, and when the 

 lid was opened, the effect was not far short of that produced 

 by a whiff of ammonia. If one can imagine ordinary furniture 

 polish raised to the nth power of intensity, he may have a faint 

 idea of the virulence of the smell. Piper and Beattie in their 

 Flora of the Northwest Coast say of T. oblongum, "odor strong 

 but not unpleasant", and the first part of the statement is 

 certainly true, but it would take a more sophisticated nose than 

 mine to confirm the second ! 



