Minnesota Plant Life. 221 



are, by this action, indicating their original terrestrial habits 

 and proclaiming as distinctly as possible that they were not al- 

 ways floating plants. Of the duckweeds the one most per- 

 fectly adapted to the aquatic habitat is at the same time the most 

 simple of all flowering plants. One must carefully distinguish 

 between that simplicity of structure which is rudimentary and 

 the similar simplicity which comes from reduction. Low types 

 of plants like some of the algae are simple in form, like the 

 smallest duckweed, but their simplicity need have no com- 

 plexity behind it. Sometimes these tiniest of duckweeds, mere 

 little green specks in the water, lie at the surface and produce 

 each on its upper side a neat little stamen and pistil quite in the 

 style of their earlier terrestrial days. 



The eighth order includes eleven families, of which but four 

 are represented in Minnesota, the yellow-eyed grasses, the pipe- 

 worts, the spiderworts and the pickerel-weeds. 



Yellow-eyed grasses. There is one species of this family in 

 Minnesota. It is not very common but occurs in the vicinity 

 of the Twin Cities. The general appearance of the plant is 

 grass-like and a few little yellow flowers, each with three dis- 

 tinct petals, are formed in the axils of a group of scales which 

 stand in a more or less ovoid head at the tip of a slender erect 

 stem. The most favorable place to seek these plants is near the 

 edges of a tamarack swamp where the country is somewhat 

 open, or on banks near the shores of lakes. The size of the 

 plant and its general appearance reminds one a little of the 

 blue-eyed grass, a common plant of the iris family, but the color 

 of the flowers at once serves to distinguish it. 



Pipeworts. Related to the plants last described are the curi- 

 ous Httle forms known as pipeworts, of which a single species 

 has been found on the muddy shores of some Minnesota lakes 

 near St. Paul, in Chisago county, in Douglas county and in Cass 

 county — stations indicating a wide distribution over the state. 

 The pipeworts have very short stems on which little tufts of 

 grass-like leaves are borne. From the centre of the tuft rises 

 a slender stem one to six inches in height. At the end of this 

 is formed a spherical head of minute flowers. If the plant grows 

 beneath the surface of the water, as it often does, the erect stem 



