22 PLANTS GROWING IN WATER. 



little dweller of the ditches and watery places, the family resem- 

 blance is very striking. The quarrel came about the anthers 

 of the Egyptian, which have no filaments and are sessile, and 

 because of a difference in the cell division of the ovary. So 

 our little plant has been separated from it, 



Linnaeus tells us that the rhizomes, which we find intensely 

 acrid and caustic, are made by the Laplanders into a kind of 

 bread that by them is most highly relished. 



GOLDEN CLUB. (JPlate IL) 

 Ordntium aqudticum. 



Flowers: very small; crowded on a spadix. Leaves: on long petioles; 

 floating ; oblong. Scape : naked ; slender. 



Of all the aquatics the golden club is perhaps the most curi- 

 ous. It is a simple member of its family. The Arums 

 have been most careful to envelope their flowers in a generous 

 spathe, that they might appear before the world in a seemly 

 garment. The wild calla, Jack-in-the-pulpit, even the skunk 

 cabbage, have all adhered most closely to this little conven- 

 tionality. It must be something of a shock to their sense of 

 propriety to have the golden club dispense with this clothing 

 and flaunt itself before the world with no protection whatever 

 for its poor little flowers. Whether the plant is more advanced 

 in its theories and at some future time we shall see all the 

 members of this lovely family without their spathes, we do not 

 know. But if wishes are powerful we may sincerely hope that 

 it shall not come to pass. 



Writers that are familiar with the diet of the Indians tell us 

 that the plant is known to them as Taw-kee and that they find 

 the dried seeds very good when boiled like peas. They eat 

 the roots, also, after they have been roasted. The red man, 

 with his instinct for scenting the properties of herbs, does not 

 need the botanist to caution him that when raw they are very 

 poisonous. 



