APHYLLON UNIFLORUM. 

 ONE-FLOWERED BROOM-RAPE. 



NATURAL ORDER, OROBANCHACE^ 



Aphyllon UNIFLORUM, Gray. — Scaly stem short and nearly subterranean, bearing few scapes 

 a span high : calyx-lobes mostly much longer than the tube, subulate, usually attenuate : 

 corolla violet-tinged, and flower violet-scented, an inch long : the lobes obovate and rather 

 large. (Gray's Synoptical Flora of No7-th America. See also Gray's Manual of the 

 Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, 

 and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.) 



HE mere lover of wild flowers will not call this one 

 beautiful, though he rarely misses a chance to gather it, 

 and to bring it home as among the singular illustrations of the 

 curiosities of flora. And yet it is pretty, and especially so is a 

 small bunch of them, and they possess the additional charm of a 

 delicate agreeable fragrance. But even the most indifferent to 

 botany as a science will not rest satisfied with knowing that he 

 has found a mere curiosity. The plant appears to be nothing 

 but flowers and slender flower stalks ; and, even when the earth 

 about these stalks is cleared away, it exhibits nothing but a little 

 scaly stem attached to the roots of some other plant. Even 

 those who are usually indifferent to botany as a science will inquire 

 into the purposes of such an organism, and take an interest in the 

 many questions connected with its behavior which attract the 

 scientific man as well. In our picture the little mass of scales 

 (Fig. I ), about an inch long, comprises all that might properly 

 be called the plant, and this is wholly under ground. It has 

 attached itself to a piece of oak root (Fig. 2), and in this way 

 derives its sole support. But it does not confine itself to the 

 oak. In Pennsylvania the writer has found it also on the beech, 

 although this tree has one species of parasite, the Beech-drops, 



(S9) 



