H2 The Botanical Gazette. [April, 



places. Once I came across Camptosorus rhizophyllus Link. 

 It covered a space of a few square feet on some detached 

 rocks in a deep shady nook beside a pond. This may be where 

 Parry found it, since he gives as its habitat. — \ 'Shaded and de- 

 tached rocks, Falls of St. Croix." It was my first sight of this 

 fern in the West, though I have often looked for it in favor- 

 able localities. The rocks on which it grew were trappean. 

 It is generally, but not exclusively, credited to calarceous 

 rocks. The only place besides this where I have seen it was in 

 Western New York, where it grew in shaded places along the 

 shelves of cliffs of limestone. In that pleasant little book of 

 Williamson, "Ferns of Kentucky," he says of it, "It is found 

 in all our Kentucky woo is wherever there are detached moss- 

 covered boulders, on outcropping rocks and cliffs either lime- 

 stone or sandstone." 



Another rare or local plant was gathered from the rocks 



above the village of Taylor's Falls, Talinum teretifoliutn 

 Pursh. Houghton found it here in 1832. It is occasionally 

 met with from Pennsylvania westward to Minnesota in our 

 northern flora, being more common in Minnesota than else- 

 where in this range of states. The Manual accords it as a 

 habitat, "serpentine rocks, "a much too restricted one. They 

 are not of that character here, being diabase, though chemi- 

 cally, if this be needful, some of the same elements and their 

 compounds could be yielded on decomposition. Upham, in 

 the Minnesota Catalogue, says of the plant, "Rare, occurring 

 only on ledges of rock, (trap, syenite, granite and quartzite)." 

 I have found it but once before, in the silicious sands at Mil- 

 ler's, Lake Co., Ind. In Illinois it is found in "sandy prairies 

 and barrens, "as stated in Patterson's "Catalogue of the Plants 

 of Illinois." At Taylor's Falls three other plants accompanied 

 it on the trappean rocks, which are also found with it at Mil- 

 ler's, Campanula rotundifolia, Selaginella rupestris, and Cla- 

 donia rangiferina. All these do well in the sand. ' It show- 

 that the Talinum would be easy to cultivate. Its flowers are 

 pretty, though expanding late in the day and lasting but a 

 short time; but its cylindrical leaves give it an odd though 



interesting look. It does not rival in the abundance of its 

 flowers its congener from Central America, Talinum patens 

 Willd.. cultivated for platbands and as a basket plant but 

 would excel it in being hardy in our latitude, and might be 

 used in a similar way, as well as for rockwork As VUmorin 



