TWENTY-NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 73 
The total number of species of flowering plants reported as found in the state 
is 1,997; and of cryptogamic plants of all kinds, including ferns, mosses, liver- 
worts, lichens, algze, and parasitic fungi, 1,027. Much more remains to be done ; 
" and with active botanical workers in the state, the chances are that before long 
there will be a greater list of veritable species reported from Kansas than from 
any other state, except California. 
THE PROPAGATION OF ERYTHRONIUMS. 
By E. B. Knerr, Atchison, Kan. Read before the Academy January 2, 1897. 
Possibly none of our native flowering plants are more interesting than the 
Erythroniums, or dog-tooth violets or adder-tongues, as they are popularly known. 
Certainly none are more beautiful. 
Along the bluffs of the Missouri river we find but two species —the Erythro- 
nium albidum and the Erythronium mesochoreum ; however, in the woods about 
my Ohio home, I was familiar with the Erythronium americanum as well as 
Erythronium albidum. 
In this paper I desire to present an account of the various modes of propaga- 
tion by corms followed in the three species mentioned. 
Whoever has studied botany is well aware of the fact that our native Ery- 
throniums present two forms of plants —a two-leaved flowering form and a single- 
leaved sterile form. Now it is these sterile or flowerless forms which I have 
found so interesting, and which most writers in descriptive botany seem to have 
inexcusably overlooked, and to these I would especially direct attention at the 
present time. 
In both Erythronium americanum or yellow adder-tongue of the East, and in 
E. albidum, the white dog-tooth violet of the Mississippi valley, the flowerless 
forms are exceedingly numerous, covering almost completely with a continuous 
mat of erect, glossy, richly-mottled leaves the sloping sides of the shaded ravines 
where they occur. The explanation for this wealth of vegetation is not far to 
seek. Carefully remove a specimen of the one-leaved form of the yellow adder- 
tongue from the rich leaf-mold in which it grows, and usually three or more 
offshoots will be observed to have taken their rise from the parent corm. These 
offshoots are quite brittle, and hence care must be exercised in taking up the 
plants. At the end of each shoot will be found a slight enlargement, which de- 
velops into a corm by the time the parent plant and runners have withered. 
These corms are capable of producing only one-leaved plants the next season. 
Thus, where this year appeared but one plant, next year in close proximity will 
spring up three and possibly four plants to represent it, provided that mean- 
while some hungry wood-mouse, mole, grub or worm has not made a dinner of 
some of the young and tender, juicy corms. A peculiarity of the offshoots in E. 
americanum is that at first they are usually directed upward, so that they may 
even rise above ground; and then they bend gracefully over and again seek to 
enter the spongy leaf-mold, planting the terminal corm, sometimes after devious 
turnings and twistings, as much as 6 or 8 inches, or possibly 10, from the site of 
the parent plant. The advantage of new forage ground is thus gained for the 
progeny plants. Occasionally flowering forms will also be found whose corms 
throw out offshoots. Of course such corms will not flower next season, and will 
send up only single leaves because of their divided vitality. This fact explains 
