no THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



is quite impossible to predict where, on the broad surface of 

 expanding knowledge, the next practical development will 

 spring forth. Hence the only logical way is to encourage the 

 advancement of all phases of knowlege — trusting with faith 

 born of experience that sooner or later some result will appear 

 of such value as to pay many fold for it all. — Dr. W .F. Gan- 

 ong in The Teaching Botanist. 



Grindelia Squarrosa in New York. — We are yearly 

 finding plants new to this section. Among these, moth mul- 

 lein {Verbascum Blattaria), velvet leaf (Abutilon theophrasti) 

 great ragweed (Ambrosia triUda) and others, formerly absent 

 or very rare, are now becoming plentiful, making so many 

 more bad weeds to contend with. One of my best finds for 

 1910 in this eastern New York locality is Grindelia squarrosa, 

 the broad-leaved gum plant, whose home is in Illinois, Minne- 

 sota and the southwest. It has not before been reported from 

 New York. I found it on a hillside pasture and it is fully es- 

 tablished, for the colony has many thousand plants, and covers 

 two acres or more — scattering in places, but in others as 

 crowded as it can grow. It looks very pretty with its bright 

 yellow blossoms, and they are plentiful enough to distinctly 

 show the color at a distance of three-fourths of a mile. But 

 it is terribly gummy and soils the hands and everything it 

 touches, and often taking it from the press you can scarcely 

 get the papers away from it, and they can never be used again. 

 How it comes here in quantity no one can say. Perhaps in 

 western grass seed. If so it should appear elsewhere, and It 

 seems strange that it should pass over hundreds of miles of 

 intervening country, to locate here, for its first eastern home. 

 From the way it flourishes and is spreading, it bids fair, at no 

 distant day, to cover the hillsides of New York and New Eng- 

 land as plentifully as daisies and buttercups. I only add that 

 the place where found is 60 miles north of Albany and but a 

 mile from the Vermont line. — F. T. Penibcr. Granville, N. Y. 



