80 The Botanical Gazette. [March, 



distance by incipient decay. Young plants have not been ob- 

 served to produce budding roots. The leaves have five lobes. 

 Many books give seven, but all over five are as a rule minor 

 lobes whose ribs spring, posteriorly, from the two inferior 

 basal veins. The veins are very prominent on the lower sur- 

 face and there is a considerable linear depression on the upper 

 surface, in their track. This gives the leaf at the time of 

 flowering, when it is but slightly developed, a very rugose ap- 

 pearance, which persists for some time. The plant puts forth 

 very early, and before the forest is fully clothed in leaves it 

 has attained almost its full development in all points save 

 the expansion and ripening of the fruit, and the maturing of 

 its underground structures. This energy for the first few days 

 is mostly expended in the growth of the stem, which arches 



over and bends itself as it is extended from the caudex, burst- 



ing asunder the bud-scales, which have begun to enlarge 

 rapidly, the inner one especially developing beyond the others. 

 The stem, thus bent, emerges from the earth often 5 cm. or 

 more before the top is dragged forth. Sometimes it happens, 

 when the ground is hard and dry, that it fails to extricate it- 

 self, and therefore perishes. The leaves are but slightly de- 

 veloped when the flower appears, which occurs almost immedi- 

 ately after the stem assumes the erect position. The flower 

 lasts five or six days. In a dry season the plant dies down 

 soon after the ripening of the fruit, and by late September the 

 top has disappeared. Again when the season is more moist 

 it will persist even to the beginning of winter. 



The fruit when ripe is readily detached from the stem, and 

 has a shallow depression at its base. It is insipid to the taste, 

 non-poisonous, and is eaten by birds, by which means the 

 seeds are disseminated. From various causes but few of the 

 seeds naturally sown ever germinate, and the extension by 

 adventitious buds forming on the root fibers is very slow, as 

 this mode of propagation does not seem to be as well estab- 

 lished with this plant as it is with some others. 



It would seem from present indications, that the time when 

 Hydrastis will be no longer found in our forests is almost at 

 hand. Possibly its total extinction could never have oc- 

 curred from the settling and clearing up of the country only, 

 since the natural terraces of many inaccessible ravines, bluffs 

 and mountain sides, where the material best suited for its sus- 

 tenance had accumulated for centuries, would have been its 



