2(32 PITTONIA. 



partly shaded by a verandah under which it grew, I noticed 

 one day what seemed like an unusually large flower in a very 

 singular situation. Inspection revealed a whorl of about ten 

 uncommonly large white petals encircling the shoot and form- 

 ing a node, at the distance of nearly a yard below its growing 

 apex. Subtending the lower whorl of petals, a set of five 

 ligulate green bracts alternating with them appeared to rep- 

 resent the calyx; and about every third node of the leafy 

 shoot beyond the flower bore a more or less distinct whorl of 

 the ordinary quinate leaves in place of the usual solitary one 



/< 



In a single instance I have seen a plant of Fragaria Cali- 



days of the great Linnaeus and of the man who was so carried 

 away with his own fancy of the importance this kind of dif- 

 ference in the numerical plan of flowers, that he separated 

 ti'om Potentilln tlie genus Tormentilla because its flowers 

 were tetramerous rather than pentamerous. 



Plantago lanceoluia is becoming a bad weed iu Califoriiian 

 fields, where at all seasons of the year, wet or dry, it maintains 

 a hardy growth. Not rarely, after the early autumn rains or 

 in early winter, such of the spikes of fruit as had but "lately 

 matured, put forth a tuft of green leaves at their summit, so 

 that the spike itself suggests a diminutive pine-apple. I have 

 not observed that this terminal leaf-tuft is ever destined to 

 become a new plant l)y falling to the ground and taking root; 

 a thing which, if it were to happen, would not be surprising. 



