144 



Alphonso Wood, in his Class Book of Botany (various edi- 

 tions, around 1870), says: "Grows in wet soils throughout the 

 United States." 



Britton and Brown, in the first volume of their illustrated 

 Flora (1896), give the habitat of A corns as "In swamps and 

 along streams," with a range from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, 

 Louisiana and Kansas, also in Europe and Asia. They make the 

 interesting observation that "In our territory fruit is rarely, if 

 ever, found." 



Gattinger, in his Flora of Tennessee (second edition, 1901), 

 says of it: "E. Tenn. Perhaps from imported stock. Cultivated 

 here and there." 



Mohr, in his Plant Life of Alabama (1901), gives its general 

 distribution elsewhere, and then says: "Scattered over the 

 State. Border of swamps. Mobile and Montgomery counties." 

 There is no hint that it may not be indigenous, and the same 

 idea prevails in Small's Flora of the Southeastern United States 

 (1903), and his Manual of the Southeastern Flora (1933). Mills- 

 paugh, in his Flora of West Virginia (1913), cites seven stations 

 for it, with no intimation that it might not have been there 

 always. 



It may be noted that several of the writers previous to the 

 Civil War were skeptical about its being indigenous, but less 

 skepticism seems to have been expressed since; as if the plant 

 was gradually making itself more at home, so to speak. 



My own experience with the species in question began about 

 the "turn of the century," when I used to see it frequently in 

 wet meadows in central Massachusetts, and a few years later in 

 one or two similar places on Long Island. In such places its 

 associates were practically all supposed native species, though 

 there is some reason to believe that the meadows themselves, 

 or some of them, occupy sites from which swampy forests were 

 cleared away by the early settlers.^ 



I never encountered it anywhere in the South until I came 

 across a patch covering several square yards in a marshy place 

 near some negro houses near the Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, 

 Alabama, on June 1, 1928. But as it grows in dense colonies in 

 wet places, and has leaves similar in size and shape to those of 

 several species of Iris (though a little greener than most Irises), 



1 SeeTorreya, 16: 269-270 (footnote). Jan. 1917. 



