CLASS DICECIA. 207 



In the order Enneandria will be found a curious, 

 but inconspicuous flowered plant, which I have called 

 Eudora. It is the Elodea of Michaux, but not the 

 same plant of the same name, of former botanists, which 

 is related to Hypericum. It is distinctly allied to Val- 

 lisneria, and belongs equally to the natural family of 

 the Hydrocharideje. There is but one species 

 hitherto known in the United States. Richard speaks 

 of a second in Cayenne, in tropical America. Our 

 plant is a submerged aquatic, somewhat resembling a 

 moss, of a dirty olive green color, growing on the mud- 

 dy margins of ponds and still streams, from Canada to 

 Florida, if not further south. The roots are peren- 

 nial, the branches diffusely forked or dichotomous, 

 thickly set with linear, or oblong, small leaves, finely 

 and minutely serrulate on the margin, and growing 

 verticillated by 3 or 4 at a joint ; from the axils of 

 these arise, about midsummer, the 2 kinds of flowers, 

 each at first, protected in a bifid spathe. — In the ste- 

 rile flower (often produced at the extremity of a very 

 long, flaccid, slender peduncle) there is a corolla of 

 3 petals, and 9 stamens disposed in 2 ranges, 3 of 

 them being interior, or, as it were, in the relative place 

 of the pistillum. From the slenderness of the pedun- 

 cle, which is also frequently abortive, the flowers tnay 

 often be seen floating at large and separated from the 

 parent plant, like the floscules of the Vallimeria. 

 The instant they attain the surface, they burst open 

 with elasticity, as well as the cells of their anthers. 

 The pollen is large and granular, the particles sphe- 

 roidal, and adhering together by 3's or4's. — The fer- 

 tile flower has a 3-parted calyx, and its tube identic 

 with the very long apparent peduncle. The petals are 3. 

 There are also 3 sterile filaments. The pericarp is an 

 utriculus, or unopening integument, including about 3, 

 rather large mature seeds, the form of which is cylindric. 



