IPOMCEA LEPTOPHYLLA. COLORADO MAN-ROOT. 2'] 



considering besides that few annuals have edible roots, the 

 inference that it is a perennial is perfectly legitimate. 



The account of the immense size of the root sjiven bv the hunt- 

 ers to Lieut. Emory is not exaggerated. Dr. Lamborn handed 

 to the writer a communication from a correspondent in Colorado 

 who had engfasred to have one of the roots due: for the Centen- 

 nial Exposition at Philadelphia, and according to this communi- 

 cation, it took two men, working with picks and crow-bar, a full 

 day to do the job. 



The immense root of our plant, which descends six or seven 

 feet beneath the surface of the ground, may be regarded as a 

 provision of Nature for enabling it to live in a region where 

 rain seldom falls, and which seems only to be fitted for cacti and 

 other similar succulent plants, with a comparatively small sur- 

 face. A leafy plant, like the Ipoinoea leptophylla, which through 

 its great extent of surface must necessarily lose much moisture 

 by evaporation, could not live in such a region without some 

 contrivance of this kind. The root is really a trunk beneath 

 the ground, which instead of losing moisture, as it would if it 

 were above ground, absorbs it, and stores it up in its huge body, 

 so that the plant may continually draw on it for its supply dur- 

 ing the growing season without fear of failure, no matter how 

 long the drought may last. 



The first sight of a flower of the rare beauty of our Ipomcea 

 is a great and pleasurable surprise to the traveller, when meet- 

 ing with it, as did the writer of this, in such a desert land as is 

 frecjuently found on our western plains, and the incident invol- 

 untarily brought to mind the touching lines by Mrs. Hemans, 

 which were suggested to her by Mungo Park's meeting with a 

 beautiful flower when in great distress in the African desert : — 



" Why art thou thus in thy beauty cast, 

 O lonely, loneliest flower. 

 Where the sound of song has never passed 

 From human hearth or bower ? 



