38 SARRACENIA RUBRA. RED-FLOWERED TRUMPET LEAF. 



about these flowers. It is the plant which acts hke the "veno- 

 mous serpent," and entices the "kirking- insect" to its sure 

 destruction. How they work to this end is very curious. In 

 " SilHman's Journal" for 1873, Professor Gray quotes from the 

 English translation of Maout and Decaisnes' "System of Botany:" 

 " The pitcher-shaped leaves are effective insect traps ; a sugary 

 secretion exudes at the mouth of the pitchers and attracts insects, 

 which descend lower in the tube, where they meet with a belt of 

 reflexed hairs, which facilitate their descent into a watery fluid 

 that fills the bottom of the cavity, and at the same time prevents 

 their egress." This is given as of our present plant, S. rubra, 

 but as Canada is mentioned, Dr. Gray thinks it must have had 

 reference to S. purpurea, which is the only one found in Canada. 

 Dr. Gray says he wishes " to call attention to the statement that 

 Sarraccnia produces a sugary excretion which attracts flies to 

 their ruin, this being the first time, so far as I know, that any such 

 statement has appeared in print." However, it appears in 

 print in American publications long before this. In Darby's 

 "Botany of the Southern States," written in 1855, we read at 

 page 219: "This genus affords a striking example of a great 

 modificadon of the petiole, since there is no doubt the tube part 

 is the petiole, and what we call the lamina, the true lamina of the 

 leaf. These tubes are generally filled with water, which is sup- 

 posed to be secreted by the plant, and this always contains dead 

 insects. The tube could not have been formed in a better man- 

 ner to accomplish a given end than this is to catch insects. The 

 saccharine secretion which surrounds the orifice decoys insects 

 to the tube, and the water entices them in. There are hairs 

 pointing downwards so as to permit an easy descent, but makes 

 the egress difficult." As before noted, it is not certain that our 

 present species, the red or Walter's Sarracenia, has this power 

 of excreting honeyed matter ; so we give what is said of it in full, 

 that collectors may be on the lookout to verify the statement for 

 themselves. 



As for the fact that the pitcher is the petiole, and that it has 



