78 The Botanical Gazette. [March, 



cidacece, but Hydrastis has evident stipules, to be seen in the 

 small tubercles, or points, projecting backward and upward 

 from the amplexicaul petiole of the lower leaf of a fertile stem; 

 and more plainly still at the base of the footstalk of a radical 

 leaf, where they will be found, in early summer, incurved 

 or overlapping each other and always enshrouded by the ac- 

 companying bud-scale. Later, when growth has ceased 

 and the old bud-scales have decayed, there will be found, 

 emerging from the overlapping stipules of a radical leaf, 

 an abortive leaf on a short and rudimentary petiole, with 

 a fully developed stipulate base, which enwraps another 

 smaller one, and so on till the full complement neces- 

 sary to the formation of a hibernaculum is present. Then. 

 when the old radical leaf has served its time and is over- 

 taken by decay there will be seen, for a short time, tip- 

 ping the outer scales of the hibernaculum which sprung from 

 its axil, instead of a mucronation, the depauperate leaf raised 

 on a short and tapering footstalk but a few millimeters in height. 

 Sometimes the depauperate leaf appears surmounting the 

 inner scales of a terminal, or the outer scales of an axillary 

 bud, as a digitate or merely fimbriate attachment without the 

 intervention of a foot stalk. This soon perishes, and nothing 

 will be found, after the bud-scale has expanded in the spring, 

 but the blackened mucro, the remains of the footstalk of a 

 depauperate radical leaf, thus plainly demonstrating that the 

 winter bud-scales of Hydrastis are the homologues of stipules. 



The development of a radical leaf without an offshoot, or 

 caudex, from a bud in the axil of the lower bud-scale of a fer- 

 tile stem of the same season's growth often occurs. The planes 

 of insertion of the scales of a new bud are always at right- 

 angles to the plane of the one from whose axil it sprung. Buds 

 are formed in increasing numbers as each year passes, until 

 as many as 20, or, even to <50 fertile stems may be found aris- 

 ing from one rhizome of from six to ten vears age, together 

 with a greatly varying number of sterile stemst or radical 

 leaves, ranging from none at alt in some cases, to perhaps 

 twenty in others. Among almost every cluster from an old 

 rootstock there will be found one or more stems bearing three 

 leaves. After the annual decay of the stem there is left a 

 cup- like depression at the summit of the caudex. 



The persistence of these depressions, each for a few sea- 

 sons, has given the plant one of its common names "golden 



