TORREYA 



September, 191 1 

 Vol. II No. 9 



GERMINATION OF CAT-TAIL SEEDS 



By E. L. Morris 



Those who roam afield in the fall, especially along marshes, 

 have often seen the masses of down and seeds which so freely 

 scatter from the cat-tail heads at any shock. Nature's com- 

 monest way of scattering these seeds, of course, is the force of 

 the wind, either in actually blowing the seeds from the head or 

 so shaking the plants that the seeds are lost out. The point of 

 this paragraph is, however, the sprouting of the seeds while still in 

 position in the cat-tail head. About the time of seed ripening this 

 particular head must have been broken off until it just touched 

 the ground, and, in the unusually dry spring of this year, the 

 seeds failed to germinate. The early summer rains raised the 

 water level of the marsh sufficiently to keep the fruiting head 

 entirely moistened and, with the direct sun pouring down, the 

 conditions became proper for the seeds to sprout. As shown in 

 the illustration, they sprouted from the surface of the head then 

 uppermost. Looking closely, one sees that the axis of each seed- 

 ling is bent into the characteristic elbow for protrusion from the 

 seed coat. At the time of taking, a few of the elbows had 

 straightened out and the primary root had begun to grow through 

 the mass of bristles into the wet soil on which the head lay. At 

 this time, each of the seedlings was probably only a day or two 

 old, as is indicated by the nearly uniform size of all the seedlings, 

 none seeming to have had an advantage over the others, and 

 the fact that the most of them were still in the "elbow stage." 

 This specimen was collected in a swamp beside the track a few 

 rods west of the Valley Stream station of the Long Island Rail- 

 road. The measurements of these seedlings at the time of taking 

 were 8-10 mm. 



[No. 8, Vol. II, of ToRREYA, Comprising pp. 165-180, was issued 14 August 191 1.] 



181 



