FIELD BOTANY 



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Edited by Dr. H. A. Gleason, Urbana, 111. 



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FOREWORD. 



\\t shall try to publish in this department short notes 

 devoted to various phases of outdoor botany and to methods of 

 collecting plants, selecting especially those things which will 

 be of interest to the younger readers. Everybody knows that 

 in studying botany at least some of the work must be done in- 

 doors, but when we use botany for a recreation, then let's get 

 outside. Let us confess that the whole purpose of this page is 

 to get you outside, where the plants actually live and where 

 you can meet and know them at first hand. 



Then possibly we can be of some assistance to you in 

 your botanical work. If you meet with some question that you 

 cannot answer, send it in. If you have a plant that you cannot 

 name, send it in. In every case we will do our best to help 

 you. And, on the other hand, if you find a rare plant in your 

 vicinity or if you make any interesting observations on plants, 

 tell us about them also, and help us fill up these pages. All 

 communications intended for this department should be ad- 

 dressed to Dr. H. A. Gleason, University of Illinois, Urbana, 

 111. 



What is our earliest flower? Professor Bailey tells us in 

 the January number of the American Botanist that the whit- 

 low-grass, Draha vcrna, is the first to bloom in southern New 

 England. Over many parts of the ^Middle West the whitlow- 

 grass is not found, and the honors for earliest blooming fall 

 now to one plant, now to another, depending on the locality. 

 Here in central Illinois the earliest seems to be the harbinger- 

 of-spring, Erigenia bulbosa, which in 1008 was in bloom at 



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