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REPORT OF THE HEAD GARDENER 
To THE DirEcTOR-IN-CHIEF. 
Str: T have the honor to submit herewith my report as 
Head Gardener for the year 1906. 
Systematic Collections 
During the past year it has been the aim in the systematic 
collections rather to maintain and arrange and label the plants 
already in the collections than to add new material. For 
other institutions for either seeds or plants. The Garden 
expeditions to warmer regions have resulted in adding many 
species new to the tender collections, especially in the cactus 
and orchid families. The hardy collections remain about as 
they were last year, with the exception of the herbaceous 
ones, in which the representation of species is considerably 
reduced, owing to causes which will be indicated when treat- 
ing in detail of the herbaceous grounds. 
Herbaceous Grounds. No extended changes have been 
made in the general arrangements here. The positions of 
some of the aquatic families have been altered along the 
brook so as to better indicate their affinities with neighboring 
groups. The locations of the trillium bed and that devoted 
to the erythroniums have been slightly changed, for cultural 
reasons, but they remain in the same general region. Of the 
material included in my report for 1905 about ninety per 
cent. has now been worked over. This has resulted in a 
large reduction in the number of species, as this verifying 
process has shown that many of the plants which were derived 
from seeds obtained by exchange were not true to name, the 
corrections showing them often to be but duplicates of species 
already in the collections, or sometimes even duplicates of 
species received from the same source under other names. 
Seeds were collected from such specimens as came to maturity 
in 1905; but many of the plants which did not produce seed 
