157 



certainly demonstrated that if you think of writing a good list 

 of the plants within the city limits of New York, be quick 

 about it friend! And such a catalogue should be valuable, since 

 no detail is trivial about the greatest metropolis. 



I submit a few notes on the identification of weeds: an her- 

 barium is essential for any degree of certainty in determination, 

 for plants not in manuals are frequently collected which key 

 out adroitly enough and are described accurately enough in 

 your book as some species which, though nearest to it in your 

 flora, is not that being analyzed, as a comparison with her- 

 barium material will prove. As should be expected, many 

 weeds not in manuals are escapes from cultivation, so that 

 Bailey's Cyclopedia may be consulted with profit. Coste's 

 Flore de la France, accurately illustrated, describes plants from 

 regions that contribute many weeds to our area, so that a ref- 

 erence to this work may solve the identification, as it did that 

 of Lepedium latifolium. If the genus of your weed is not known, 

 nor easily discovered in Briton's, Bailey's, or Coste's, then 

 you may have to study Bentham and Hooker's monumental 

 Genera Plantariim or Engler and Prantl's Pflanzenfamilien. 

 Then, as the unfamiliar genus is likely to contain but few 

 species, go directly to the herbarium for comparison. Should 

 it chance that it is represented by many members, try a mono- 

 graph, if there is one; if not, try to match it by diligent exami- 

 nation of every species in the herbarium. Failing in this, and 

 not knowing any expert on the group to whom you can send a 

 duplicate for determination, it's advisable to declare the speci- 

 men "a foreign plot" and forget about it. 



Joseph Monachino 



Trip of September 25 to Watchung, N. J. 



Fifty-eight members and guests were present. An excellent 

 representation of the early autumn vegetation of this region 

 was seen and those members who had been on spring and sum- 

 mer trips over the same trails were able to compare the lists of 

 species observed then with those in evidence now. Many plants, 

 of course, were in fruit, including wonderful specimens of flower- 

 ing-dogwood, as w'ell as Viburnum acerifolium, Arisaema 

 triphyllum, Smilacina racemosa, Phryma leptostachya, Circaea 

 latifolia, Angelica villosa, and Mitchella repens. A splendid 



