1U5 



rosettes connected by filiform stolons just beneath the surface 

 of the ground. 



Under the name Soliva naslurliijolia it is recorded in 

 Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States (1860) as oc- 

 curring around Charleston, S. C, introduced, but with no indi- 

 cation of its native country or its habitat in South Carolina. 

 No such plant is listed in Mohr's Plant Life of Alabama (1901). 

 It appears in Small's Flora of the Southeastern United States 

 (1903 and 1913) under the same name, and in his Manual of 

 the Southeastern Flora (1933) as Gymnostyles nasturtiifolia. In 

 Small's Flora its range is given as from North Carolina to 

 Florida, with no intimation that it grows in any other country; 

 but in his Manual its range is extended west to Louisiana, and 

 it is said to be native of South America. 



In the first paragraph I mentioned the resemblance of Gym- 

 nostyles to Coronopus, or Carara didyma as it is now called. In 

 the last six or seven years I have seen these two species growing 

 close together in Quincy, Fla., Tuscaloosa, Ala., and on the 

 campus of Louisiana State University, if not elsewhere, and 

 the resemblance is very striking when the Carara is young, be- 

 fore it develops its horizontal stem and small racemes of flowers 

 and fruit. Single leaves of the two plants put side by side can 

 hardly be distinguished by external appearances, though very 

 likely there are internal differences correlated with the pres- 

 ence of an aromatic oil in Carara as in most Cruciferae. 



Although the two species can sometimes be found growing 

 within an inch of each other, it is hard to find a place where 

 they are both abundant enough, and unmixed with other vege- 

 tation, to be photographed satisfactorily in the field. And the 

 dark soil on which they usually grow increases the difficulty. 

 However, in May, 1937, I collected some of both between the 

 sidewalk and street in a mediocre residential section of Tusca- 

 loosa, and photographed them on a white background after 

 they were dried, with the results shown in the figure. If they 

 had been collected a few weeks earlier, when the stems of the 

 crucifer were less developed, the resemblance would have been 

 still closer. 



Whether or not there is any significance in this resemblance 

 is a puzzle. Several cases are known of pairs of unrelated plants 

 which grow in the same habitat and bloom at the same time. 



