VI ARUNDINARIA SIMONI 63 
below, serrated on both edges. Both surfaces are apparently 
smooth, but a lens reveals a thick white down, especially on 
the under side. The midrib, which is very prominent on | 
the lower surface, is flanked on each side by about six 
secondary nerves, palpable to the touch. The leaf tapers off 
to a fine point at one end, and to a petiole about an eighth of 
an inch long at the other. Mr. Bean remarks (Gardeners’ 
Chronicle, 10th March 1894): “ It is curious that on the under 
surface of the leaf one side only of the midrib is glaucous, 
the other half green.” This distinction is, so far as I can 
observe, only conspicuous towards the tip of the leaf where 
it begins to taper off. ina young state the leaves are often 
striped with a silver variegation. 
It often happens that for some years, until it is thoroughly 
established, ARUNDINARIA SIMONI only throws up dwarfed and 
slender shoots bearing very narrow and starved foliage, a 
puzzle and disappointment to the planter, who begins to 
think that he has got hold of a different species. But it is 
only a question of time and patience ; in the end the true 
character of the plant is sure to assert itself. 
A portion of rhizome cut from a plant which has been 
growing for three summers in its present place, shows the 
following characteristics :— 
A fistulous, underground stem about half an inch in dia- 
meter, the pipe—the walls of which are lined sparsely with a 
sort of white pithy down—being three-sixteenths of an inch in 
diameter. ‘lhe pipe is hermetically closed by the prominent 
nodes at intervals of from 1} inch to 3 inches in length. 
It is round, and lacks both the depression and the groove, 
caused by the close packing of the scaly stem bud, which 
