gg MISSOUKI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



bore fruit,* once when Dr. Mellichamp found fruit on a 

 plant which had bloomed simultaneously with T. filamen- 

 tosaj and a third instance observed by me on Tybee Island 

 in May last, (Plate 44, f. 2} on a plant which must have 

 bloomed just about as T '. filamentosa was coming into 

 flower. The species, therefore, is all but restricted for its 

 propagation to vegetative methods, by which its present dis- 

 tribution along the sand dunes can fairly well be explained, 

 since the well-budded thick subterranean shoots possess 

 great vitality. 



What has been said of the ecology of Y. gloriosa might 

 be repeated almost verbatim for Y. recurvifolia, which is 

 likewise autumnal-flowering, and the fruit of which, 

 barring several rather questionable statements in gardening 

 journals, to my knowledge has never been observed until 

 Dr. Mellichamp, in the summer of 1901, found plants fruit- 

 ing in cultivation in the neighborhood of Charleston, and 

 furnished the material from which the description and 

 illustration here published were drawn. The occurrence 

 of Y. recurvifolia on several islands between the delta of 

 the Mississippi and the mouth of the Mobile river, which is 

 not connected with the present question, may, perhaps, 

 have been brought about by currents transporting rhizome 

 fragments derived from plants cultivated somewhere along 

 one of the rivers opening on the northern shore of the 

 Gulf. 



These ecological considerations suggest with force that 

 if species in the time-honored use of that term, Y. gloriosa 

 and Y. recurvi 'folia, so far as their spontaneous forms are 

 concerned, are of unexpectedly restricted distribution in a 

 region where their congeners are widespread, and that they 

 manifest a surprising disharmony with their surroundings 

 which, because of the rigid pollination requirements of all 

 of this genus but aloifolia, has thrown them into almost 



* Engelmann, Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis. 3: 211. 

 t Kept. Mo. Bot. Gard. 4 : 199. 



