BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 357 



GENERAL NOTES. 



Notes from Florida. — In a letter to Dr. E. L. Sturtevant, Mr. William S. 

 Allen, Chocaluskee, Monroe county, Florida, writes as follows : " I do not recol- 

 lect whether in a former letter I ever informed you that many of our annuals are 

 perennials here. One of my neighbors has a fine lot of Lima beans that have 

 been in bearing for three years. They cover a wire fence about 100 yards long. 

 Egg-plant, okra, peppers, cotton, tobacco, all are perennial. As a stalk of to- 

 bacco matures the leaves drop off, suckers put out, and in their turn ripen a 

 crop, and it is not uncommon to cut three crops a year from the same land. I 

 do not use the weed, but all my laborers, without exception, smoke and chew, 

 and I find in out of the way places a dozen plants of tobacco growing wild, 

 scattering seeds and holding their own for years without care. Wild cotton 

 grows all around me. Some are standing where I found them when I came 

 here thirteen years ago, and have been full of cotton every year since 1870. 



. . . Common Indian pumpkins are perennial, but the Cushaw will only 

 bear one crop, and then dies, as at the north." 



It is not usually known that the cow-pea furnishes varieties which are es- 

 teemed as human food. Mr. Allen says, speaking of the Whip-poor-will pea, 

 that, " It is generally known among farmers here as six-weeks pea, and is used 

 both as a snap and shell. They are quite palatable. Farmers here make great 

 use of them. In picking we pick partly full-grown pods, and partly mature 

 peas that have not yet become dry. These are boiled together, and are a popu- 

 lar dish." 



Melaiunyriuu Aniericanum. — In July last I found growing on the North 

 Valley Hill, Chester county, a broad-leaved variety of Melampyrum Aniericanum. 

 The leaves are all ovate except the lowest pair, which are lanceolate, the upper- 

 most having a minute tooth or two near the base, or very frequently none at 

 all. The most striking peculiarity is that the spatulate cotyledons remain as 

 long as the plant lives. It is so unlike the regular form that it seems hard to 

 call it a mere variety, but on examination and comparison I think it can be 

 nothing more, for of over one hundred specimens collected all maintained the 

 above characteristics fully. The variety seems to have been over-looked by our 

 botanists, for I see no mention of it in Gray, Wood, or the " Flora Cestrica" of 

 Darlington. — S. T. Fergus, West Chester, Pa. 



Puccinia heterospora B. <te C— In the September number of Hedwigia, Dr. 

 G. Winter mentions a fungus on Sida apinosa, collected in Southern Illinois, by 

 Mr. F. S. Earle. It is one of those troublesome species of Puccinia, having 

 both one and two-celled spores; and an examination of my own specimens 

 from Mr. Earle shows that in the two-celled spores (which are comparatively 

 few) the position of the septum varies, being either transverse, longitudinal or 

 oblique. In the Journal of the Linmean Society for 1875 is the following des- 

 cription : 



Uromyces Thwailesii B. & Br., Maculis luteis hypophyllis; soris circinantibus 



