I06 SOLIDAGO ULMIFOLIA. ELM-LEAVED GOLDEN-ROD. 



two yellowish-white exceptions are all of them yellow ; but they 

 vary very much in habit and in the arrangement of the flowers, 

 so that though the Golden-rods are everywhere in our autumn 

 fields and forests, there seems to be an unending variation in the 

 effect they produce ; and the impression to the novice in their 

 study is that there are even a greater number of species among 

 them than is actually the case. 



Though so numerous in America, they are represented also in 

 Europe, but only by a single species — the Solidago Virga-aiu'ca 

 — long known to the people of the Old World as the " Golden- 

 rod," a name which has come with the emigrant to the New 

 World, and has thus been given to the whole family, though few 

 of them have that virgate or rod-like character which suggested 

 the name for the original species. An old herbalist tells us "it 

 is called in Latin Virga aurea, because the Stalks, being reddish, 

 make the bushy tips of the Flowers seem as if they were of a 

 Gold-yellow, and in English it is called Golden-rod:' It is how- 

 ever interesting to note that though there is only one species 

 indigenous to Europe, that one species, Solidago Virga-aurea, is 

 also a true native of the northern regions of our own continent. 

 Another interesting fact in their geographical relationship is that 

 notwithstanding their great number — nearly half a hundred spe- 

 cies — in the Adantic portion of the United States, they almost 

 disappear as they approach the Pacific Ocean, only seven spe- 

 cies being described in Brewer and Watson's " Botany of Cali- 

 fornia." 



To show how rapidly our knowledge of the Golden-rods pro- 

 gressed, it may noted that in a copy of Gronovius' " Flora Vir- 

 crinica" before us, issued in 1762, there are but three species 

 described. Muhlenberg in his catalogue (181 3) enumerates 

 forty-three, and for the whole of North America, Nuttall notes 

 but forty-nine in 1818 ; while now before us is a copy of Wood's 

 "Class-Book," in which are described forty-eight east of die 

 Mississippi alone. Some of these indeed may be regarded in 

 time as mere varieties of others, for in these days, as our know- 



