I06 ORONTIUM AQUATICUM. GOLDEN CLUB. 



form the yellow mass of the spadlx. In the Richardia, or Calla, 

 the stamens and the pistils are found in different flowers on the 

 same spadix, or, in botanical language, the flowers are monoe- 

 cious, while in the Golden Club the stamens and pistils are both 

 present in each flower, thus making the flowers perfect or her- 

 maphrodite. This difference in the flowers was seized on by 

 Dr. Lindley in his "Vegetable Kingdom," and was made the 

 principal ground of the division of the Arum family into two 

 separate orders, the Orontiacece, according to Dr. Lindley, con- 

 taining all those aroids which have perfect or hermaphrodite 

 flowers, while into the family of the true Aracecs are placed the 

 species with monoecious flowers. Characters drawn from the 

 presence or absence of stamens in the fruit-bearing flowers of 

 this class of plants are, however, found to be variable, and hence 

 the generality of botanists have not adopted Dr. Lindley's 

 division. 



Our plant seems to have attracted the attention of collectors 

 at an early period, for we read of it as having been known to 

 Ray, a famous English botanist of the end of the seventeenth 

 century. Ray seems to have received it from the Rev. John 

 Bannister, who made a catalogue of the plants of Virginia, which 

 he sent to the English botanist in 1680. Darlington tells us that 

 Bannister drew with his own hand figures of the rarer species, 

 and that " he fell a victim to his favorite pursuit, for in one of 

 his botanical excursions, while clambering some rocks, he fell, 

 and was killed." He described our species as a " floating Arum 

 with a naked spadix." Clayton, who sent the plant to Grono- 

 vius some fifty years subsequent to the time of Bannister, took 

 it to be a " Potamogeton with large, glaucous leaves, and yellow 

 flowers on a long, dense, stalked spike." As an Orontium it first 

 appears in Schreber's edition of the " Genera Plantarum " of 

 Linnaeus, where its distinction from the true Arums Is pointed 

 out. 



The meaning of the name Oroniium has been a matter of 

 much speculation. Dr. Barton, in his " Flora of North Amer- 



