»f^ NOTE and COMMENT ^ 



Elder Bi^ossoms. — Elder buds are such small dots of 

 green and then of creamy white that it was no wonder I paused 

 before two bushes and thought they looked unnatural. Al- 

 most every cyme had more or less big buds around its margin, 

 six or eight times as big as the small ones. Is the plant trying 

 to imitate its relative of the woodlands the hobble bush ? My 

 books say nothing about these enlarged flowers on the tips of 

 the branchlets and I never noticed them before. The many 

 little ones are spreading their white petals and stamens reveal- 

 ing a dot of white in the heart, a promise of jelly in Septem- 

 ber. The big blossoms are slow about opening. Finally the 

 petal tips turn back and spread most deliberately. Five 

 anthers supported by unusually stout filaments are disclosed. 

 The anthers possess pollen but there is no trace of an undevel- 

 oped berry within.. There is also much more difference in the 

 size of the buds than of the blossoms. — Nell McMurray. 



Germination of Wild Cucumbers. — I was much in- 

 terested in the article on the "Germination of Wild Cucumber 

 Seed" in the November issue of The American Botanist. I 

 have experimented a little with these seeds. Imt so f;u- I have 

 come to no definite conclusion as to whether it requires both 

 cold and moisture to cause them to germinate or whether cold 

 alone will do it. The plant is very common in this part of the 

 countr}- — central Indiana — and I liave often planted it as an 

 ornamental vine. When I first began 1 procured seed from 

 vines growing along water courses and in damp situations 

 and kei)t them dry until spring. Of course I failed to get 

 many of them to germinate. After a few failures I concluded 



