
24 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
“nutritive,” as has been described by Rimbach,° since they pos- 
sess no pronounced power of resistence, and are not contractile 
or especially adapted for storage. 
THE RHIZOME. 
According to Gray’s Manual (sixth edition) all our species 
should be ‘‘stemless,” but Morong’ has corrected this and 
describes for £. decangulare a short thick caudex one or two 
inches in length. This species has a nearly horizontal or ascend- 
ing rhizome, densely covered by remnants of old leaf bases, 
with no internodes. The numerous long hairs developed from 
the epidermis are very characteristic, being pluricellular, the 
cells in a single row, and the basal cell very short. The cortex 
is differentiated into two or three subepidermal strata, the cells 
of which are mostly pentagonal in tranverse section, with dis- 
tinct but narrow intercellular spaces, and an inner tissue of 
many layers of nearly roundish thin walled cells containing 
starch. This portion of the cortex is very open on account of 
large intercellular spaces, but no lacunes were observed. Within 
the cortex is an endodermis, the cell walls of which are not 
thickened and do not show the characteristic spots of Caspary. 
Nevertheless, the endodermis was readily visible by the peculiar 
clearness of its cell walls in contrast with the surrounding corti- 
cal parenchyma, and by the somewhat irregular shape of the 
cells. Within the endodermis is a large, solid, fundamental tissue, 
consisting of somewhat thick walled cells with distinct inter- 
cellular spaces, and containing starch. The mestome bundles 
occur in the cortex and in the fundamental tissue. Those in the 
latter tissue, being thus within the endodermis, are not arranged 
in any order, and are mostly bicollateral and perihadromatic, but 
not always completely so. They are not surrounded by any 
special sheath, and the vessels are either scalariform and quite 
narrow or reticulated and wider. 
‘ ®Beitrage zur Physiologie der Wurzeln. Ber. d. deutsch. Bot. Gesell. 17: 186 
1899. 
7 Notes on the North American species of Eriocaulez. Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 
18: 354. 1891. 

