BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 63 



be investigated, is how and when such seeds of serotinous cones are 

 eventually liberated and made available, and whether not a great 

 many of them at last perish, the cones never opening. — G. Engel- 



MANN. 



Fraxinus quadrangulata has, at least about Allenton, in 

 St. Louis county, Missouri, hermaphrodite flowers. Mr. G. W. Let- 

 terman finds it there common on rocky hills where it is a small tree 

 or shrub with blunt angles of the branchlets, and in rich bottom 

 lands, where the tree is large, and the angles of the branchlets sharp 

 and even winged. Leaves are sometimes in threes when the branch- 

 lets show six angles. The terminal buds are gray-downy. In both 

 localities the flowers are hermaphrodite. The calyx is practically ab- 

 sent, or indicated only by two obscure knobs or two minute scales, 

 alternating with the stamens ; the anthers are sessile and (before open- 

 ing) reniform, their two cells being united above ; stamens somewhat 

 persistent at least to the beginning of May, when the young obovate- 

 oblong fruits, already somewhat twisted (which twist is more marked 

 in the mature fruit), have reached about half their full size. How 

 does the species behave in other parts of the country'-* The style of 

 Fraxinus Americana is very slender — much longer than the ovary ; 

 that of F. viridis does not much exceed the ovary. — G. Engelmann. 



NoTUL.E ExiGU/E. — Tn.iEE-FLOWERED Bloodroot. — Among the 

 anomalies occasionally met with, the most unexpected is a scape of 

 Saw^uinaria Canadensis, found by Mr. E. N. Wheeler, in the vicinity 

 of Boston, bearing a pair of opposite bracts about half an inch below 

 the terminal flower, each bract with a well-formed flower in its axil ! 



Trillium sessile, as we learn from Mr. Lehman, of Salem, 

 North Carolina, and from a specimen sent by him. abundantly occurs 

 in the neighborhood of Kingston, Tenn., with bright yellow petals ; 

 and I have recently heard of this form from other western sources. 

 S]5ecimens, and especially living roots, taken up in autumn, are 

 desired. 



Perularia virescens is the proper name for Habenaria [Peru- 

 laria) virescens oi Gray's Manual. The examination of fresh speci- 

 mens shows the ^'cuculli bivalves" of Lindley, the two lips of the base 

 of the anther-cell which fairly cover the gland. In Florida specimens 

 just received from Miss Reynolds, of Florida, the outer lip is the 

 larger, or the one which principally protects the gland. How is it in 

 the northern plant ? It has long since been announced by me in Am. 

 Jour. Sci. , that Orchis rotiindifolia, Pursh, is a true Orchis. — A. 

 Gray. 



Platanthera rracteata, Torr. — This is usually regarded as a 

 summer flowering species. In my garden, where it has bloomed for 

 the first time this season, it is the earliest of many that I have. The 

 first flowers were open on the 26th of April, and half of the spike had 

 opened by the ist of May. Hitherto Orchis spcctabilis has been the 



