THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 65 



made with the ramie plant {Boehmeria nivea) a member to the 

 nettle family belonging to the same genus as our common 

 false nettle. In the market it is often called vegetable silk 

 and in its native country, China and the East Indies, is known 

 as grass cloth. Fabrics made from it are strong and white 

 with a pearly or silky lustre. 



Proliferous Venus Fly-trap. — In the Botanical Gazette 

 for November Dr. John W. Harshberger illustrates a flower- 

 ing shoot of the Venus fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula) in which 

 the bracts had produced a tuft of leaves in their axils instead of 

 flowers. These tufts of leaves were removed and potted and 

 soon became new plants. In this connection it may be noted 

 that a near relative of this plant, the round-leaved sundew 

 (Drosera rotiindifolia), has the same habit but in this case, 

 the old leaves falling on the soil developed new plants from 

 their margins just as the leaves of begonia or Bryophyllum 

 are known to do. This peculiarity of the sundew was first 

 reported by Mr. James A. Graves. 



Protection Against Cold. — Even in the plants of cold 

 climates which have become adjusted to the extremes of cold 

 by the survival of the best for uncounted centuries, many 

 forms of protection are necessar}^ ; in fact, these very methods 

 of protection have enabled the species to sun^ive and the lack 

 of such features frequently account for the inability of tropical 

 plants to extend into even temperate regions. The intense 

 cold has the same effect upon vegetation as drouth and the 

 protection against cold is found upon examination to be really 

 a protection against drying. At the approach of winter, thin- 

 bladed leaves are cut off, and in some cases, as the herbaceous 

 perennials, the branches, also. In these latter, the life of the 

 plant retreats to the stem underground, while in trees and 

 shrubs, the living cells are safely packed beneath the bark or 

 in the center of buds whose thick scales are often lined with 



