2S THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



The Bluet in Cultivation. — In regions were the bluet 

 (Houstonia cocrulca) is not abundant, admirers of the plant 

 often endeavor to transplant clumps of it to their gardens, but 

 are seldom, if ever, successful. The plants may continue alive 

 during the blooming season, but thereafter soon disappear. 

 Looking at the yellowing flower-stalks, the gardener concludes 

 that the plant is dead and plants something in its stead, but it 

 appears that this is a mistake and that the plant is simply 

 preparing for another year. There is some uncertainty as to 

 whether the plant is a true biennial, like the fringed gentian, 

 and dies after once blooming, or whether it is a perennial which 

 reproduces and multiplies by means of slender thread-like root- 

 stocks. The plant is so small and so inconspicuous when out 

 of bloom that much does not seem to be known about it, but 

 this is certain : Soon after blooming a large number of 

 plantlets appear at the base of the old plants either from seeds 

 or from offsets and by autumn have formed specimens of 

 blooming size. In spots where more vigorous vegetation may 

 encroach upon them, the bluets soon disappear, but when pro- 

 tected they continue to bloom for many years. 



Unstable Nomenclature. — Some of the disdain of 

 descriptive and taxonomic effort is due to the feeling, which 

 is not without justification, that much of the so-called system- 

 atic work is little more than the personal naming and re- 

 naming of specimens without the addition of new knowledge 

 or the expression of new meanings ; the work is therefore likely 

 to be disregarded as irrelevant and not worth the while. The 

 systematist has also lost sympathy with many of his peers be- 

 cause of the controversies over nomenclature. The impression 

 has gone abroad that he deals only with names. The con- 

 troversies in this field issue from two mistaken premises on the 

 part of nomenclatorialists — the assumption that nomenclature 

 can be codified into invariable law, and the practice of making 

 rules retroactive. Varying practice in language tends in these 



