26 IPOMCEA LEPTOPHYLLA. COLORADO MAN-ROOT. 



Texas. In Emory's report, Dr. Torrey says that it was gath- 

 ered on the upper part of the Arkansas, and the headwaters of 

 the Canadian River. 



" The stems," continues the same writer in the work just 

 quoted, " are often erect, about two feet high, and of a bushy 

 appearance. From the appearance of the specimens, I should 

 suppose the plant was a perennial, but according to Dr. James, 

 it is an annual." Dr. Porter also accepts the statement made 

 by Dr. James, although he qualifies it somewhat by marking the 

 plant " annual ? " All these authorities, however, are mistaken, 

 for the Ipomcea Icptophylla is a perennial. Yet the mistake is 

 quite explainable, as to the hurried traveller the plant may 

 easily appear as an annual. The writer collected it in 187 1 on 

 the line of the Arkansas River, and on drawing it out he found 

 it to come up much the same as an annual would. But it is 

 singular that Emory's own account should have been over- 

 looked, as in it the perennial character of the plant is clearly 

 niade out, and we can only explain this oversight by supposing 

 that Emory's description was not in Torrey's hands when he 

 drew up the account of the botanical collections. Emory, in 

 his " Notes of a Military Reconnoissance, etc.," Washington, 

 1 848, page 13, writes as follows: "The soil of the plains is a 

 granitic sand, intermixed with the exuviae of animals and vege- 

 table matter, supporting a scanty vegetation. The eye wanders 

 in vain over these immense wastes in search of trees. Not 

 one is to be seen. The principal growth is the buffalo grass, 

 cacti in endless variety, and very rarely that wonderful plant, the 

 Ipomcaa Icptophylla, called by the hunter, Man-Root, from the 

 similarity of its root in size and shape to the body of a man. It 

 is esculent, and serves to sustain human life in some of the many 

 vicissitudes of hunger and privation to which men who roam the 

 prairies as an occupation are subjected." There is not, indeed, 

 a positive statement in this passage that our plant is a perennial, 

 but with our knowledge of Ipomoea paiidurata, or even of the 

 common Sweet Potato, which belongs to the same family, and 



