64 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



first to open in my gardens, but this season Cypripedhim pa7-viflon4m 

 will beat it. This will be open by the middle of May. My Platan- 

 thera was originally from Massachusetts, and being from a more north- 

 ern region, required, perhaps, less heat to advance it than the same 

 species from locations nearer home. 



Mr. Wheeler, of Berlin, Mass., finds it in bloom the last week 

 in June at Winchester, N. H., at an altitude of i,ooo feet ; so that 

 the time given in the books (July and August), even in its average 

 locations, is probably much too late. — T. Meehan, Germantoivn, Phil. 



Double Thalictrum anemonoides. — Double Thalictrums are 

 occasionally found, as many instances are on record in the literature 

 of the past one hundred years. Those which I have seen have been 

 white, and, as the florists would say, rather semi-double than double. 

 I have one now in flower sent me last year by Mr Dory, of Spring- 

 field, Ohio, that is as double as it is possible to be, and of a pretty, 

 rosy tint of white. The petals are as regularly arranged as in a first- 

 class double Camellia. The object of this note is to encourage ob- 

 servers still to look for double ones ; as although double ones are now 

 not novelties, there may be novel shades of color. — T. M. 



CoB^A scandens. — It may be worth noting that the flowers of 

 Cohxa- scandens^ the familiar hot-house climber, are distinctly pro- 

 tcrandrous. At the time that the stamens are shedding their pollen, 

 the trifid stigma is completely closed, nor does it open until the an- 

 thers have become functionless. — W. W. Bailey. 



Notes on Certain Silkweeds. — Of the rare Asclepias Meadii 

 Torr., which does not appear to have been previously detected but in 

 Illinois and Iowa, the present writer found two nice specimens near 

 Lancaster, Wisconsin, in flower on the 19th of June, 1879. The spe- 

 cies differs notably from A. obtiisifolia, Mich., with which it is grouped, 

 in that the umbel is nodding by an abrupt bend in the upper part of 

 the peduncle. This character is easily effaced in the process of re- 

 moving the wilted specimen from damp to dry papers, and so the dry 

 specimens may not have shown it. 



The habitat of A. SuUivantii, Engelm. , according to Dr. Gray, in 

 the Synoptical Flor., is, 'from Ohio to Kansas." But upon the wet 

 prairies of central Minnesota it is by far more common than in any 

 locality further north. The far western A. spcciosa, Torr., has not 

 been reported from farther east than Nevada, but it is frequent in the 

 central part of Minnesota, where the eastern A. Comuti, Decaisne, 

 seems to reach its western limit. To these observations upon known 

 species may be appended the following description of a new one : 



Asclepias uncialts. Stems several, only an inch or two long, 

 decumbent ; leaves from ovate to narrowly lanceolate, short-petioled or 

 sessile, smooth and somewhat glaucous, the margins white tomentose; 

 umbels three or four flowered, sessile ; corolla dull purple ; hoods 

 broadly ovate, truncate, a litde shorter than the anthers, their dimpled 

 auricles produced into acuminate points which rest against the anthers 



