42 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Spadix about i inch in diameter, entirely covered by the perfect flowers, 

 greatly enlarged and sometimes 6 inches in diameter in fruit. The perianth 

 of each flower consists of four hooded sepals. 



A common plant of low, wet woods, meadows and swamps. When 

 the spathes first appear, they possess little of the rank odor which 

 characterizes them when older and which renders them objects of 

 opprobrium. They appear almost before the last snowdrifts have dis- 

 appeared and indicate the first awakening of plant life in spring. 



The Arum family (Araceae), to which belong the Jack-in-the-pulpit, 

 the Wild Calla, and the Skunk Cabbage, also contains several other 

 native plants usually found in wet or damp places. The Green Water 

 Arum (Peltandra virginica (Linnaeus) Kunth) with bright-green, 

 hastate-sagittate leaves, dften i to 2 feet long and 3 to 8 inches wide, 

 possesses an inconspicuous green spathe, 4 to 8 inches long, with a strongly 

 in volute undulate margin. The Golden Club (O r o n t i u m aquaticum 

 Linnaeus), found only in a few localities in the southern part of the State, 

 possesses a cylindric, golden yellow spadix, from which the spathe falls 

 at flowering time. 



The Sweet Flag, Calamus or Flagroot (Acorus calamus Lin- 

 naeus) (figure III) belonging also to this family is a common plant of wet 

 meadows, with long, linear, flaglike leaves and the spathe a leaflike exten- 

 sion of the scape, the spadix spikelike, 2 to 3 inches long and about 

 one-half of an inch in diameter, compactly covered with minute greenish 



yellow flowers. 



Yellow-eyed Grass Family 



Xyridaceae 

 Carolina Yellow-eyed Grass 



Xyris caroliniana Walter 



Plate 2b 



A small, tufted, grasslike plant of wet meadows and bogs, with 

 numerous fibrous roots and flat, linear, grasslike leaves 4 to 15 inches long. 

 Flowering scapes as long or usually much longer than the leaves. Some- 

 times over a foot tall, bearing at the summit a dense, ovoid, obtuse spike 



