41 



I am convinced that i)hints f)f the Mun-of-the-Karth j^et very 

 old. On my father's farm in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a few 

 plants grew in a field (the root shown above was from that 

 group). For eighty years, the land was cultivated, alternatini;; 

 in corn, oats, wheat, and grass. When in sod, which was for 

 only two or three years at a time, the plants would grow and 

 liloom, but were not often seen when the cultivated crops were 

 growing. The number of plants did not seem to increase or 

 decrease as the years went by. Another plant grew on a bank by 

 the roadside where year after year it came up and bloomed. It 

 was there when I was a boy, and apparently the same plant, 

 for there was but one, decorated the roadside the last time I 

 went by the [)lace. I would not be surprised if plants of this 

 species sometimes live and bloom for half a century. 



Explanation of plate III 



Blossoms of Wild Potato Vine, Ipomoea pandurala. Photograph by O. P. 

 Medsger. 



Root of Wild Potato Vine (resembles a petrified dog). Photograph l)y O. 

 P. Medsger. 



Lincoln High School, 

 Jersey City, New Jersey. 



ALPINE PLANTS OF IvASHMIR* 



Ralph R. Stewart 



Kashmir is an Indian State in the North West Himalayas. It 

 is all mountainous with the exception of the famous Vale of 

 Kashmir, at an elevation of 5,500 feet, which may now be 

 reached by a good motor road from Rawalpindi in the Punjab. 

 During the past twelve years I have spent parts of seven summers 

 collecting in Kashmir and am now working over the material 

 in The New York Botanical Garden. 



The same four main zones that Rydberg found in the Rocky 

 Mountains are to be found in Kashmir. The foothill zone is 

 arid and the commonest tree is Pinus longifolia. In the lowest 

 foothills there is a thorny scrub jungle with such trees as Acacia. 

 Bauhinia and Pistachia and at the upper limit of the zone oaks 

 are very common. 



* Abstract of a talk before the Torrey Botanical Club, January 30, 1924. 



