118 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



botany because he may not have taken this study up in school, 

 yet the successful farmer is one of the best of practical bot- 

 anists. He may not always understand the fundamentals of 

 every operation requiring botanical knowledge but he knows 

 what to do to produce effects. Long before the scientists 

 ascertained why leguminous plants enriched the land, the 

 farmer was familiar with the fact that clover plowed under 

 added fertility to the soil. 



Range of Lychnis Alba. — The white evening campion 

 (Lychnis alba) is a weed so recently introduced that it 

 failed to be noted in any but the most recent Manuals and the 

 range is given as Ontario and the Middle and Eastern States. 

 It is very evident that it has come to stay, however, for it is 

 steadily increasing its territory. It has been known for some 

 years from Joliet and no doubt may be found in the environs 

 of Chicago. An account of this plant was published in vol- 

 ume I, of this magazine. 



PoLYEMBRYONY. — When we plant a seed we expect it to 

 produce a single new plant, but instances are not rare, in which 

 the seed contains more than one embryo and then we may get 

 several plants from a single seed. Polyembryony as this con- 

 dition is called is found in at least a dozen plant families and 

 in thirty or more different species. As is well known, the 

 single embryo found in ordinary seeds is produced by the fer- 

 tilization of a single cell, the egg-cell, within the embryo-sac 

 of the ovule. The extra embryos found in polyembryony 

 arise in different ways, sometimes from other cells within the 

 embryo sac, at others from cells just outside of it. In the 

 June Torreya M. T. Cook records his experience with the 

 seeds of the mango tree (Mangifcr Indica) in which he found 

 at times no less than eight embryos. The orange {Citrus 

 aurantium) was the first plant in which polyembryony was 

 found and it still remains one of the most frequent exhibitors 



