Decembee 6, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



796 



BOTANICAL NOTES 



MYCOLOGICAL NOTES 



As usual the new Report of the State Bot- 

 anist' is very largely given over to the classi- 

 fication and description of the larger fungi. 

 Nine colored plates, mostly of the edible 

 fungi, accompany the report. 



C. N. Jensen's "Fungous Flora of the 

 Soil " ' brings together what is known as to 

 the fungi ordinarily to be found in the soil. 

 After a general discussion of the subject ac- 

 companied by the citation of many publica- 

 tions, the fungi are arranged and described in 

 systematic sequence. In the latter part there 

 are many helpful figures in the text. 



Professors L. E. Jones, N. J. Giddings and 

 B. F. Lutman publish^ the results of their in- 

 vestigations of the potato fungus Phytoph- 

 ihora infesians. It is a summary of the pres- 

 ent state of our knowledge of this parasitic 

 fungus, and includes a long list of the litera- 

 ture of the subject (105 titles), and ten plates. 



Miss Frances Dorrance (Dorranceton, Pa.) 

 has made an English translation of Part XIII. 

 of Dr. Oscar Bref eld's " Investigations in the 

 General Field of Mycology." Only 150 copies 

 were printed and these were privately distrib- 

 uted. The work appears to be carefully done, 

 and since this part relates to Smut Fungi, the 

 translation should have a wide sale. ($1.75.) 



SYSTEMATIC NOTES 



" The North American Species of ISTymphaea " 

 is the title of a paper by G. S. Miller and P. C. 

 Standley, and is issued as one of the Contribu- 

 tions from the U. S. National Herbarium (Vol. 

 16, Pt. 3). The genus here monographed is 

 what many of us learned as Nuphar, and in- 

 cludes the Yellow Water-lilies of the country. 

 After a long study of these plants the authors 

 are able to recognize nineteen species for 

 North America, five of which are quite widely 

 distributed, viz. : N. microphylla Pers. (east- 

 em Canada, New York to Ne\^ Jersey), N. 



'Bull. 157, N. Y. State Museum. 

 ^Bull. 315, Cornell University Expt. Station. 

 "Bull. 245, Bureau of Plant Industry, XJ. S. 

 Dept. Agrie. 



ruhrodisca (Morong) Greene (Canada, New 

 York to New Jersey), N. americana (Prov.) 

 M. & S. (eastern Canada to British Columbia, 

 south to Nebraska, Ohio and New Jersey), N. 

 advena Ait. (New York and New Jersey to 

 Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, Kentucky and 

 North Carolina), N. polysepala (Engl.) 

 Greene (Alaska to California, eastward to 

 Colorado and South Dakota). The illustra- 

 tions and maps showing distribution of 

 species add to the value of the paper. 



Dr. William Trelease essays a classification 

 of the Black Oaks in a recent paper in the 

 American Philosophical Society (Vol. LI., 

 1912), accompanying the paper with four 

 plates of buds and acorns. 



THE RETURN OP THE NATIVE FLORA 



Eecently Professor M. E. Gilmore, of Lin- 

 coln, called my attention to an observation 

 which he had made upon the return of the 

 native flora on an abandoned tree plantation 

 on the high Nebraska plains. At my request 

 he has given the particulars in the following 

 summary statement: 



It is a problem of much interest to the -writer 

 hereof to observe the repossession by the native 

 flora of areas from which it has been dispossessed. 

 Among the places of which particular note has 

 been made was an abandoned tree claim in Sheri- 

 dan County, Nebraska, in the topographic region 

 known as the High Plains, popularly called the 

 Short-grass Country. This observation was made 

 in the first week of August, 1912, on a tract of 

 land about six miles northwest of Eushville, Ne- 

 braska, which had been entered under the Timber 

 Claim Act of Congress. The number of acres 

 required by law to be planted with trees had been 

 broken out (plowed) and set in elm and ash trees, 

 and after that nothing more had been done to the 

 land, so that for about twenty years the original 

 flora has been gradually repossessing the ground. 

 I estimated that about 5 per cent, to 10 per cent, 

 of the trees were still struggling to live, being in 

 no case more than ten feet tall, and in most cases 

 not more than two and a half feet tail and many 

 less than that. Following I give a list of twenty- 

 five species by name which I found to be stably 

 reestablished, besides which I found half a dozen 

 or more others which I did not identify. Those 

 identified were: Bulbilis dactyloides (Nutt.) Raf., 

 Stipa comata Trin. and Eupr., Malvastrum coc- 



