58 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



blood that flows from the wounds, not a weak looking fluid in 

 which a vivid imagination is required to see any resemblance 

 to blood. It is said that the Indians once used this juice as a 

 part of their war paint. Makers of cough medicines have also 

 found a use for it. The bloodroot is a member of the poppy 

 family all the members of which are characterized by a thick 

 colored juice. In the poppy this juice is white; in the common 

 celandine it is yellow. Although the juice of the bloodroot is 

 red it bears a pure white flower of wax-like texture. Before 

 blooming it is wrapped up in the only leaf the plant possesses. 



The yellow bell-shaped flowers of the adder's tongue are 

 attractive enough of themselves to command our attention, but 

 the plants have a singular trait in the behavior of their bulbs 

 which make them doubly interesting. The plants are usually 

 very abundant in w^et places, their brown-blotched leaves mark- 

 ing every hollow in the woods. All who have attempted to dig 

 up the plant in flower, know that it springs from a compact 

 bulb at a considerable depth in the earth, often a foot or more. 

 How this bulb got so deep in the soil was long a mystery for 

 it was known that the seed falling on the earth produces only 

 small bulbs near the surface. In such positions they do not 

 bloom. For some unknown reason they must be deeply buried 

 to flower. Certain other plants have thick roots that after get- 

 ting firmly established contract and pull the plant into the 

 earth, but the adder's tongue has a unique way of its own which 

 consists in developing long runners which worm their Avay into 

 the soil. These might be described as a sort of portable bulb, 

 for before the summer ends, each has formed a new bulb at its 

 tip, and the parent bulb has withered away. If the runner has 

 gone deep enough, all is well, but if not, the plant has to try 

 again another season. The cunning of the plant, however, 

 has fallen a little short of its object for the runners sometimes 

 come to the surface and spread out laterally instead of descend- 

 ing and it may be several years before the plant, with which 



