166 



exceedingly difficult to remove from wool. This weed has recently 

 been reported^ from Salt Lake and Millard Counties, Utah. 



Intermountain Herbarium, 



Utah State Agricultural College, Logan, Utah 



Some Effects of Gold on Plants in Alabama in 1940 



Roland M. Harper 



The winter of 1939-40 was the coldest for many years in Ala- 

 bama. The average temperature for fifty-three stations, scattered 

 over the state, was 12.2° below normal in January, 3.0° below in 

 February, 0.6° in March, and 1.1° in April. At Tuscaloosa the 

 mean temperature for January was 32.9° F., as compared with a 

 normal of 45.1°. About six inches of snow fell the night of the 

 22nd, and it covered the ground completely for about a week, and 

 partly for another week. In Pickens, the next county on the west, 

 which in most winters has no snow at all, nearly two feet of snow 

 was reported in some places. Temperatures below zero Fahrenheit 

 were reported in Tuscaloosa on several consecutive nights during 

 the week that the ground was covered with snow. Although the 

 mean temperatures for February, March and April were only a 

 little below normal, there was a killing frost nearly throughout the 

 state on the night of April 12-13. 



The first noticeable effect of cold on plants in Tuscaloosa in 

 1940 was frost ribbons issuing from the base of a cultivated shrub, 

 apparently Lantana Camara, on the morning of January 2. I had 

 published a few notes on this phenomenon (the latest in Torreya 

 for February, 1938), but had no record of its occurrence on a 

 woody plant before, unless the splitting off of the bark of orange 

 trees in Florida in severe freezes is caused by such ice formation. 

 The Lantana is not hardy in Tuscaloosa, where it dies down to 

 the ground every winter, and usually comes up from the roots again 

 in the spring. But that cold spell seems to have killed it completely, 

 and I have seen none here since. 



^ Cottam, W. P., Garrett, A. O., and Harrison, B. F. New and extended 

 ranges for Utah plants. Utah Univ. Bui. 30:7. 1940. 



