JANUABT 24, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



155 



offer unusually little opportunity for the pas- 

 sage from host to host of the wingless para- 

 sites. There is thus all too little cross-breed- 

 ing, and family idiosyncrasies get all too easily 

 preserved and made the basis of species separa- 

 tion. What I propose to do then, in a forth- 

 coming systematic paper on the Mallophaga, 

 is to reduce the number of species of owl 

 Docophori and of some other similarly ex- 

 panded groups. This present note is simply 

 notice to that effect, with a suggestion of the 

 biological reason why. 



Vernon L. Kellogg 



StANFOED IjNrVERSITY 



(ENOTHERA AND CLIMATE 



In their interesting account of a recent visit 

 to Bartram's locality for CEnothera grandi- 

 flora, at Dixie Landing on the Alabama River, 

 Professor de Vries and Mr. Bartlett' say : 



Neither (E. grandiflora nor CE. Tracyi has here- 

 tofore been known as other than annual, and the 

 abundance of rosettes which would obviously not 

 flower this season was therefore a point of great 

 interest. 



In growing CE. grandijiora and many other 

 CEnotheras under a variety of climatic con- 

 ditions, I have been greatly struck by the 

 different ways in which they respond, both as 

 regards the annual or biennial habit and the 

 time of flowering in a given season. Seeds 

 of a series of CEnothera grandiflora forms 

 from Birkenhead, England, which I planted 

 in a tropical greenhouse at the University of 

 Chicago in July, 1907,^ were grown under 

 tropical conditions, the plants remaining 

 rosettes throughout the winter and flowering 

 in May, 1908. CE. Lamarckiana forms treated 

 in the same manner nearly all remained 

 rosettes indefinitely, i. e., for about twenty- 

 two months, until the experiments were sus- 

 pended. This difference in behavior I at- 



^De Yries, Hugo, and Bartlett, H. H., "The 

 Evening Primroses of Dixie Landing, Alabama, ' ' 

 Science, N. S., 36: 599-601, 1912. 



^ See Gates, R. E., ' ' An Onagraceous Stem with- 

 out Internodes, " New Phytologist, 11: 50-53, 

 pis. 2-3, 1912. 



tributed to the fact that CE. grandiflora is 

 adapted to a more southern climate than CE. 

 LamarcMana. In 1909 I observed typical 

 rosettes of CE. grandiflora growing in mid- 

 summer (probably as escapes) in uncultivated 

 land of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 

 Hence in that climate also the plant is 

 biennial. From these and related facts, to- 

 gether with the observations of de Vries and 

 Bartlett, it is probable that all the CEnotheras 

 of this group are biennial in their native 

 localities. 



When grown from seeds planted in the 

 greenhouse in January or March, CE. grandi- 

 flora often omits entirely the rosette stage, 

 beginning to form a stalk when quite a young 

 seedling. In my cultures under these condi- 

 tions the characteristic leaf -type of the mature 

 rosette is always omitted. The plant, there- 

 fore, unlike the CE. LamarcMana forms, be- 

 comes annual by shortening its life cycle. 



Plants of CE. grandiflora grown from seeds 

 from Dixie Landing behaved in still a differ- 

 ent way in the English climate this year. 

 Seeds were sovm in the greenhouse in Jan- 

 uary, and the young seedlings planted out in 

 the end of May. They formed very imperfect 

 rosettes but, though stem-formation began 

 early and they grew luxuriantly, yet they 

 failed almost completely to come into bloom, 

 only two plants out of two hundred and 

 twenty-one producing any flowers. 



Incidentally it may be mentioned that, as I 

 have pointed out elsewhere,' CE. grandiflora 

 occurred in the region of Carolina and Vir- 

 ginia as late as 1821 (Barton's " Flora of 

 North America," Vol. I., plate 6). It would 

 be worth careful search to discover if indi- 

 viduals do not still survive in this region, for 

 that was undoubtedly the source of the large- 

 flowered CEnothera described by Bay in the 

 " Historia Plantarum," 1686, and which must 

 have belonged to a race either of CE. grandi- 

 flora or of GE. LamarcMana. 



Seeds which I obtained from Birmingham, 



^ Gates, E. E., ' ' Early Historical-botanical Eec- 

 ords of the Oenotheras, " Froc. Iowa Acad. Sci., 

 1910, p. 108. 



