THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 107 



about an inch long that stand erect on the smaller end and 

 make the plant almost as conspicuous as the blossoms do. 

 They are ripe in late October. The prickly pears that come 

 to the autumn markets are the products of a southern species, 

 but our native prickly pear is very like the other, except in 

 size and is also edible. It can scarcely be called palatable. 

 There is a certain wildness of flavor about it, however, which 

 those who welcome new experiences from Nature will always 

 be glad to taste. — From an article in New York Tribune. 



FLOWERS IN HIDING. 



* I * HE ancients told of a flower, the asphodel, which bloomed 

 ■■• only in the sunless meadows of the underworld. Mod- 

 erns long ago set the story down as a bit of poetic fancy, but 

 the myth really has a counterpart in fact — so hard is it for the 

 imagination to transcend entirely the realm of the real. I 

 found this out one day in late spring when I plucked up a 

 purple violet by its roots, and lo! radiating horizontally from 

 the base were a number of subterranean blanched stalks tipped 

 with tiny pink and purplish buds which had been buried with 

 the roots in the earth. These are true flowers, producing 

 abundant seed underground, but are without petals, fragrance, 

 or nectar. Any one may see for himself these gnomes of flow- 

 ers by examining the bases of blue violet plants in late May 

 or June. In some species of violets the secret flowers are 

 borne not on the horizontal creepers, but on upright stalks, 

 and such flowers are not buried, though in other respects they 

 are similar to the underground kind. 



There are others of our wild plants less common than the 

 violet that produce subterranean blossoms. One of these is the 

 polygala or milkwort, a small herb frequent in sandy soil, 

 which may attract us by its pretty spike of purple flowers that 

 give never a hint of the underground runners tipped with plain- 



