THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 49 



flour known as Florida arrowroot is produced. The most 

 valued faculty of all, 'however, is the ability of this plant to 

 obtain nitrogen from the air by means of bacteria associated 

 with its roots. Clover, alfalfa and the leg-umes g-enerally 

 have long been known to secure nitrogen in this way and thus 

 actually benefit the soil by growing in it, but most plants use 

 up the nitrogen in the soil which then has to be renewed by the 

 addition of manure and other fertilizers. The coontie thus far 

 appears to be the only plant whose roots and stems are used 

 for human food, that is able to improve the soil it grows in, 

 and it thus becomes an important plant to the farmer since it 

 can grow in sterile soils. 



Xeralexis. — The ecologists have always been at a loss 

 for a single word to characterize that faculty in plants com- 

 monly known as drouth resistance. We have long had the 

 term xerophyte for the drouth plants such as the cactus and 

 yucca that sui-vive with the minimum of moisture and the ad- 

 jective xerophytic is in common use, but no term for this 

 ability to endure drouth has heretofore been proposed. In a 

 recent number of Science, however, this omission has been 

 noted, and the word xeralexis, from the Greek xerotes, drouth, 

 and alexesis, resistance, has been proposed. In recent years 

 we have frequently had our attention drawn to books whose 

 chief merit lay in the fact that they used the vernacular instead 

 of the sonorous Latin and Greek of the scientist, but in 

 xeralexis we are introduced to an attempt to reverse the usual 

 preceding. Whether scientists can be prevailed upon to use 

 the term remains to be seen. The Germans, at last ought to 

 look with, favor upon it since the term in their own tongue is 

 austrocknungsresistenz. 



Epiphytes of the Sea. — The word epiphyte usually 

 brings to mind thoughts of tropical forests in which the com- 

 petition of plant with plant for the light is so great that many 

 have been obliged to leave their natural habitat in the soil and 

 take up positions on the trunks and branches of the trees. It 



