RARE NATIVE PLANTS FERNALD 383 



gardens. But Kerria, has a very close ally lingering at the southern 

 margin of the Appalachian Upland. At a few spots near Tusca- 

 loosa, Ala., Neviusia alabamensis (pi. 4, fig. 2), like an apetalous 

 Kema, occurs, discovered in 1858. It is a dramatically interesting 

 and biologically most significant plant; and no one has ever found 

 it in adjacent States. Let an impulse to blast away the cliffs where 

 it grows lead to fatal action, some one may become momentarily 

 richer thereby but Neviusia will be gone. In 1934 Bayard Long and 

 I found a singular plant in a very restricted bit of peat near large 

 fresh-water ponds in Princess Anne County, Va. Unlike anything 

 known to us, it eventually proved to be a member of Hypoxis^ sub- 

 genus lanthe^ of the Australian region and South Africa. One other 

 member of lanthe occurs as one of the very rarest of plants in the 

 southeastern States. Otherwise the group belongs in the antipodes. 

 To the botanist the little colony of Hypoxis Longii in Princess Anne 

 County is of great significance, as one of the living descendants of 

 the flora of Cretaceous dispersal which reached Australia before it 

 was cut off from connection with other lands. It was discovered in 

 1934; it prospered in 1935; but in 1936 word came to me that the 

 neighboring ponds were being drained and the Hypoxis area ditched. 

 Fortunately the little Hypoxis is still holding on ; but it is inevitable 

 that the time will come, with the "improvements" now going on, when 

 it must completely disappear. In fact, deep ditching and consequent 

 lowering of the water table, such as the powers that be have exten- 

 sively carried forward on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, spells ruination 

 to the highly specialized and sensitive descendants of ancient stocks 

 which, undisturbed, have been able, until the advent of the white man, 

 to hold on in specially favorable spots. Incidentally it is ruining 

 the breeding and feeding haunts of the vast group of organisms, 

 both animal and vegetable, which have always lived together and de- 

 pended upon one another. Kecent pages of journals devoted to the 

 saving of natural conditions are replete with such facts. 



Strongly suggesting the geographic relationships of Hypoxis^ sub- 

 genus lanthe, are many other pantropical groups represented on our 

 Atlantic Coastal Plain. As thrilling as any are the Burmannmceae^ 

 tiny plants of a family closely related to the orchids. Burmannia 

 hi-flora was based by Linnaeus upon three specimens collected by 

 Clayton in Virginia. Except for material said to have been obtained 

 by Thomas Nuttall somewhere in the State more than a century ago, 

 we have known of no other collections since Clayton's until the recent 

 discovery of four stations for it, two in Greensville County, one in 

 Southampton, one in Nansemond. At its really extensive station in 

 Greensville County it is in a sphagnous bog still persisting at the 

 margin of a cultivated field. Burmannia there nestles in the shade 



