260 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



thes trifoliata, Betula alba, var. populit'olia, Carpinus Americana, and Ari- 

 sa?nia triphyllum ; 19th, Saxifraga Pennsylvanica and Ranunculus abortivus; 

 21st, Geranium maculatum. 



Last autumn I noted the remarkable second flowering of MenyarUhes ; in 

 consequence of that effort, its flowers are rather scarce this spring. — W. W. 

 Bailey, Brown University, May 23, 1883. 



' Cundurango. — The plant received by the Botanic Garden of Harvard 

 University from the Agricultural Department at Washington, about ten years 

 ago, has this year blossomed, for the second time. It proves to be, without 

 doubt, a Macroscepis, as Prof. Ernst (in Trimen's Jour. Bot. 1872, 268) rightly 

 conjectured. It is not the original Humboldtian species, nor is it Fendler's 

 No. 1051. It is said that there is more than one Cundurango; but it may be 

 suspected that the plant which Triana, in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, XX. 34, has 

 named Gunolobus Cundurango, and also Marsdenia Reichenbachii, is the same as ours 

 It has very marked characters, especially in the very thick and fleshy lobes of 

 the corolline corona ; but 1 have not the means of knowing certainly whether 

 it is a described species or not. — A. Gray. 



Notes on the Buckeye and Viburnum nudum. — While in the Ash, 

 Beech, Ironwood and other young trees the root soon becomes woody, in the 

 Buckeye it remains fleshy for quite a number of years. Specimens that by the 

 rings of scars left by terminal bud sc ales indicated ages of six, seven and eight 

 years, still had such soft roots that these could be cut with the thumb nail. 

 The tap root is large (several times as thick as the stem of the plant), and spin- 

 dle shaped, filled with a fleshy white pith, while the layers of wood and bark 

 surrounding this are rather thin. The rootlets are provided with small, 

 whitish, tuberous branches and tips. 



Another interesting feature of this young Buckeye is that very frequently 

 (I might almost say usually), the two or four buds above the cotyledon scars 

 are alternate; above these the normal position again is resumed. 



The Viburnum nudum ordinarily has opposite buds, though it is by no 

 means a rare occurrence to find them in whorls of three, particularly on suckers 

 or upright branches. This mode, however, is continued only by the main axis, 

 and in no case have I observed that branches of such stems bear ternate buds; 

 they always have the usual opposite ones. A sort of " missing link" was sup- 

 plied by a stem that had at a number of nodes two branches, one-third of the 

 circumference apart, while at the next node was a single branch directly above 

 where the third would have completed the whorl. 



In several instances all the buds were alternate, in some again they were 

 irregular. 



Cornus stolonifera shows the same departure from the regular mode of 

 branching, but in this species the alternate arrangement is more common, while 

 the ternate whorl is rare. — William Werthner, Dayton, 0. 



Direct Observation of the Movement of Water in Plants. — In the Am. 

 ■Jour. Sci., Mch. '83, p. 237, Dr. G. L. Goodale calls attention to Vesque's direct 

 observations of the absorption of water by plants. The method there given is 



