66 



The Ottawa Naturalist. 



[June 



Europe [and America, under the name of Resurrection plant ; 

 but is closely allied with it and has almost the same range. 

 The form most usually seen in curiosity shops is S. lepidopJiylla^ 

 which extends from Texas to Peru and of which an excellent 

 figure is given herewith, copied from the American supplement 

 of the Encyclopedia Britannica. These plants, like the mosses, 

 nearly all of which— as pointed out hy John Ruskin — may 

 be called Everlasting plants and will regain their green colour and 

 former beauty upon being moistened, even when they have been 

 quite dead for years. 



ROSE OF JERICHO — { Anastatica Hierochuntina.) 



Probably the plant most widely known under the name of 

 Resurrection plant— the generic name of which,indeed,is derived 

 from the Greek word Anastasis, resurrection — is a small annual 

 Crucifer belonging to the Cress family, which grows wild in 

 Syria. It is a curious little plant, with thick stems, fleshy leaves 

 and small white flowers. The leaves fall from the plant after 

 flowering, and the many branches and branchlets thickly beset 

 with short seed-pods then become dry and woody and rising 

 upward, bend inward at their points. In this condition the dry 

 plant becomes separated from the ground, and like the " Tumb- 

 Img-weed " of our western plains, is driven long distances across 

 the desert by the winds. It is stated in Nicholson's Dictionary 

 of Gardening that this is supposed by some commentators to be 



