ri 6 The Botanical Gazette. [April, 



" It probably lives about a year. The seedlings appear late in the 

 autumn, along the banks and in the bottoms of dried up pools ready 

 to make an early growth in the following spring." (Dr. C. E. Bessey, 

 in American Naturalist, May, 1890.) 



" On Staten Island, it certainly appears to be perennial." (Dr. N. L. 

 Britton, in Bulletin of Torrey Botanical Club, July, 1890.) 



My attention was attracted to the plant early in May, when I found 

 it blooming in great profusion in this vicinity, many of the flowers 

 being double. Its habitat, about Alma, is chiefly shallow ponds, made 

 by the collection of surface water in slight depressions in the clayey 

 soil of the region. These ponds are often dried up early in the sum- 

 mer in dry seasons, particularly since the forests have been cut off. 



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these ponds were nearly or quite dry. About this time my interest in 

 R. lacustris was renewed by the note in regard to it in the Bulletin of 

 the Torrey Botanical Club for July, and I visited some of its favorite 

 haunts to find out what its condition was at that season. 



The date as recorded in my note-book was July 21st. The water of the 

 pool was all gone, leaving a soft mud on the bottom and apparently no 

 specimens of the plant alive. On closer examination, however, I 

 found that the plants were there, but in a condition hardly recogniz- 

 able. The floating stems were prostrate on the mud or partly buried 

 in it, their finely dissected leaves dry and withered or entirely gone. 

 The stems, however, were alive and green, and at the nodes were clus- 

 ters of small leaves and budding rootlets. Even at this time there 

 were many cases, in which parts of stems had disappeared and the new 

 plants had established themselves. An interesting fact in this connec- 

 tion was the marked brittleness of the stems of the old plants- they 

 broke very readily, so that it was hard to disentangle them from the 

 mud and weeds without snapping them into bits. During the summer 

 I visited the same and similar localities several times, and in a very 

 little while after my first visit I found that all traces of old stems had 

 disappeared, and that the young plants were making vigorous growth 

 and might have been mistaken for seedlings. These plants rooted 

 vigorously, sending out large clusters of threadlike fibrous roots and 

 numerous petiolate three parted leaves, with cleft divisions. The pet- 

 ioles and under sides of the leaves were generally decidedly pubes- 

 cent Under the date, Sept. 15th, I find the following in my notes: 



" I hese plants have continued to grow until, in manv cases they are 

 four or five inches in height, quite pubescent and in many places so 

 crowded as to densely carpet the dry bed of the ponds in which they 



