42 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



I liave little to add except that the ovules iu his specimens vary from 6 to 10, more 

 commonly 10; in P. inajor from 8 to IS; also that the capsule in the former is narrower 

 as well as longer than that of P. major, being cyliudraceous-oblong, and a little over 3 

 lines in length; the seeds in the former are of twice the size of the latter, dull as well 

 as dark and without the delicate reticuhition of the coat which fresh and dry seeds of 

 P. major exhibit. Finally, the sepals of the long-podded si)ecics are oblong, decidedly 

 narrower than those of P. major, and all four, as well as the bi'act, more strongly and 

 acutely keeled. 



On looking at the older descriptions, I observe that the Plantain in question has 

 been taken for P. iuajor, prol)ably l)j' Elliott, certainly by ToiTcy, in his Flora of the 

 Northern States, and by Darlington in the second (and most valuable) edition of the 

 Flora Cestrica. The terms which they use in describing the calyx and the capsule may 

 assure us of this. Mr. Commons remarks that it is much the more common species in 

 his neighborlujod. If my memoiy rightly serves, it is the door-yard Planlaiu of my 

 natal district, the centra! part of the State of New York. I have it from Vermont and 

 Canada (so that it may be the plant Mhich Pursh mistook for 7^. nirullata, which is /'. 

 inaxivut, Jacq.); and I have small and slender forms of it from South Carolina, Georgia, 

 and Texas, also from Southern Illinois. In short, it is the plant which first Hooker 

 and afterwards I myself mistook for P. Kamtsrliotira. Although there are only four 

 seeds in the pods of the slender sjiecimens which I had formerly exaniined, there arc 

 commonly G or 8 ovules, i. e. three or four in each cell, i am sorry to say that the only 

 published name applicable to the species is that of P. RayeUi of Decaisne, founded on 

 a depauperate form of it. I should have prefeiTcd to have it bear Ihe name of some 

 one of those botanists who have evidently had it in hand, v* ithoiU knowing it was an 

 undescribed species, probably intligenous to the country; for'l find no trace of it in 

 any other part of the world, not even in our north-western regions from which we have 

 a proljably indigenous form of P. major, or of the nearly related P. Atiiatica, of which 

 the real P. KamUchaiicoj appears to be a few-seed form. 



Foreign Plants Introduced into the Gulf St.vtes. — With a few excci)tiou.s 

 of those foreign plants which have found their way into this region Irom the Atlantic 

 coast, orfrom the country adjoining south of it, their introduction has l)een effected 

 through the seaports, and, as elsewhere, chiefly by the deposition of ballast from the 

 shipping. In his exploration of the flora of this coast region, the l)otanist is surprised 

 at finding, almost season after season, ])lants strange and new to him, arrivals from 

 distant shores in diflerent zones of the new and the old world. As will be seen from 

 the following list, some are mere transient visitors, losing soon their foothold and dis- 

 appearing entirely, like the West Indian Mdochia mdlssrefolia ; some reappearing 

 again, after a lapse of years, as the l/6'/r«/'*a^is rm«(W,' whih; otiiers, adapting them- 

 selves more readily to the conditions to which they are exjjosed in their new home, 

 continue to flourish and to propagate their kind year after year. Some species amongst 

 them spread rapidly into the interior, becoming fully establishetl amongst the denizens 

 of the indigenous flora, and in extending over large areas of ground, covering it to a 

 greater or less exclusion of the native races, add new features to it and afl'ect decidedly 

 for better or worse the economies of man. One of the most striking instances of the 

 kind is offered by the introduction and rapid spread in the Southern Stales, during the 

 last ten j'cars, of the Lenpedeza xtrtata, whose history seems to be of sullicient interest 

 to put upon record. Dr. Ravenel mentions first this plant from the /«/■ Eaat. as having 

 been observed by him about twenty years ago near Charleston, S. C. Immediately 

 after the war the rapid spread of a new plant arrested the attention of the farmers in 

 that State and Eastern Georgia (Dr. Mettaur, 186.").).* The year after, the. agricultural 



*Chapman. Box. Ctazette, Vol, III, No. 1, p. 4. 



