1900} PERENNIAL HERBS 185 
perennial organs of attachment are wanting, and since the tuber 
is very superficially iocated and the aerial shoot is relatively 
high, heavy, and exposed to strong winds. 
Physalis longifolia Nutt. does not show any contraction of its 
long fleshy tap root, but reaches a considerable depth in quite 
another way. The plumule of the seedling is raised 5 to 10" 
above the ground and transforms itself afterwards into a long 
shoot. The primary root grows vertically downwards, sending 
out numerous thin lateral rootlets, and becomes subsequently 
thick, fleshy, and filled with starch. Very soon on its surface 
adventitious buds appear, some at the upper end at the limit of 
the hypocotyl, rarely on the hypocotyl itself, others deeper 
down at a distance of 6 or 8 from the surface of the earth. 
At the close of the vegetative period the upper part of the plant 
dies down, but the root, at least a part of it, with its buds, 
hibernates, and at the beginning of the next year one or more 
of the buds, now much deeper than the plumule was, grow out 
by means of the reserve material stored up in the root. In 
older specimens I found the root 1° thick and extending to a 
depth of more than 50, 
2 The seedling of Asclepias Cornuti Decne shows a development 
Toot shoots quite similar to that of Physalis longifolia. 
oo Carolinianum, Callirrhoé alceoides, and Nothocalets 
pias aa ia distinguished by the peculiar phenomenon that in 
in apie the root is slit into several longitudinal cords 
found aa of the dying off of certain tissue portions. I 
cena i root of Delphinium, for instance, divided into eight 
yorming’ a circle round a central hollow space and con- 
€ and below. In Nothocaleis the root at a length 
four - Poi variously pierced and divided into two, three, or 
laticesiat¢ om cords, each of them about 6™ thick, united 
caused by sj GN heights. This fission of the root is not 
liar mode eee . decay of the older tissue, but is due to a set 
Acer 8towth in thickness. The details of the processes | 
Mi hee, ‘onhdi closer study. A corresponding phenomenon 
served and studied by Fost in Gentiana cructata L., 
