SIO 



IsJotes and Enquiries on certain Plants 



French traders call it graise de buffle, or buffalo fat." A citation of the locali- 

 ties which it inhabits wild may be not useless to the British cultivator. " In- 

 digenous on the banks of the Missouri and the lesser streams, from the 

 confluence of the river Platte to the sources of the Missouri." {Nuttall, as 

 quoted in Gard. Mag., by J. B. Russell ; who has addetl, " grows sponta- 

 neously in the extensive plains on the banks of the Missouri.") 

 Santalaceae. 



Osyris alba. In TJie Encyc. of Plants, in Sweet's Hort. Brit., in Loudon's 

 Hort. Brit., it is noted of this that it had not flowered in Britain up to the 

 time of registering the species is those works. Has it ever flowered in Bri- 

 tain ? Are both sexes of it in Britain ? If but one, which ? In Nees ab 

 Esenbeck's Genera Florcs Germanicce Iconibus et Descriptmiibus illustrata, 

 details of the structure of the parts of fructification of each sex are exhibited 

 and explained : hence the plant flowers and grows wild in Geriuany, 

 \}rticdcece (Nees, the name). 



Cannabis sativa. The cultivated hemp-plant. This species supplies an 

 obvious and popularly known example of dioeciousness in plants. Are not 

 the male plants usually feebler than the female ones ? and do not they wither 

 earlier ? What proportion in number do the plants of the one sex bear to 

 the plants of the other ? A person familiar with the culture of crops of the 

 hemp-plant would readily answer these questions. I have, I think, read, 

 long since, somewhere, that a female plant of hemp which had stood remote 

 from all other hemp-plants had yet borne seeds that had proved capable of 

 germinating, and that this had been referred to the fact that here and there a 

 stamen had been observed to be present among the female flowers. The 

 result of renewed observation on a point like this would be useful. 



Since I wrote the preceding, 1 have met with the following information 

 quoted into the Enci/cl. of Plants out of the Encyc. of Agriculture : — 



" The male plant decaying long before the female, the former requires to be 

 pulled up as soon as the setting of the seed in the females shows that they 

 have effected their purpose. Hemp is sown on well prepared loamy soil about 

 the end of April; the male plants are generally pulled about the beginning of 

 July, and the females four or five weeks after them, when they have ripened 

 their seeds." {Encycl. of Agr., $ 5327.) 



Humulus Lupulus. The hop-plant, {fig. 39,40.) There is a striking differ- 

 ence in the inflorescence of the two sexes in this species, {fig. 39, 40.) The 



female flowers are borne 

 in a short closely imbri- 

 cated catkin, and this is ^r^^ 

 developed in the progress "' * 



to maturity into the cone-shape body 

 (39. h, 40. 3), the aggregate of which 

 constitutes the "hops" of commerce. 

 The male flowers (39. a, 40. a) are 

 borne " in compound axillary panicles" 

 (Smith). A plant of the female hop 

 can be obtained from the proprietor 

 of any hop plantation ; a plant of the 

 male hop from some wild habitat of hop 

 plants ; " the habitats are," Smith has 

 written, *' in thickets and hedges, espe- 

 cially where the soil is stiff and rather 

 moist." In a habitat of this character I 

 once found male plants flowering on 

 Sept. 26. ; Smith has given July," so 

 that in the interval of these times there 

 is hope of the collector of dioecious plants being able to identify a plant of the 

 male hop, and secure it for himself. I have once heard it remarked that the 

 degree of bitterness in the pollen of the male hop is very much greater than 

 the degi-ee of bitterness in the cones of the female, and that, could the pollen 



