48 ADDISONIA 
mostly native of tropic and subtropic America, only two of the 
thirty-five known species having been found on the Eastern Hemis- 
phere (Madagascar). The peculiar, bright-colored ‘‘flowers” are 
really but an investment of the true flowers known as the involucre; 
the true flowers, as in most of the spurge family, consist of a few 
naked stamens and a single, also naked, pistil. ‘The boot-shaped 
involucre comprises a posterior inflated portion termed the ap- 
pendix and a more or less prolonged anterior tube made up of five 
parallel lobes from the apical orifice of which the flowers protrude. 
Several of the species are leafless, while a number of others put forth 
but apologetic foliage. 
A peculiar fact came under my observation while collecting the 
Bahamian boot-flower (Pedilanthus bahamensis Millsp.) on Grand 
Turk Island, where this leafless species often covers areas of an 
acre or more. Here, as upon all other islands upon which it grows, 
it has never been known to produce leaves, not even in localities 
and years when the rainfall was greater and more prolonged than 
usual. In making inquiries concerning this character one of the 
older natives informed me that while the plants never produced 
leaves naturally yet if cuttings were placed in water for a few weeks 
leaves would appear. In order to prove the statement I placed 
ee cuttings in a pitcher of water in my room; in less than two 
weeks leaves were put forth by all of them. T his was my first 
knowledge of aphyllous plants being artificially induced to become 
leaf-bearing. 
C. F. MILLSPAuGH. 
