148 
Frost Flowers reported 100 years ago 
RayMonp H. Torrey 
Since the reports in TorREYA, of ‘frost flowers” on Cunila, 
made by me, and the interesting comments and similar reports 
on them in the last number by Professor H. M. Jennison, of the 
University of Tennessee and by Dr. R. L. Harper of Tallahas- 
see, Fla., reporting similar occurrences on Verbesina and Plu- 
chea, I have received from the Missouri Botanical Garden, 
St. Louis, a copy of its bulletin, for October, 1924, with an 
article on the subject, containing photographs of large numbers 
of such ice crystals, in the Garden, on Verbesina virginica. The 
writer of the article says that a hundred years ago Stephen 
Elliott in “A Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and 
Georgia,” wrote of the marsh fleabane, Pluchea, that on cold 
frosty mornings, crystalline fibers nearly an inch in length shoot 
out in every direction from the base of the stem. “It would ap- 
pear,” he says, “as if the remnant of the sap or water, absorbed 
by the decayed stem, had congealed and had burst in this man- 
ner through the pores of the bark. Does this proceed from any 
essential, quality of the plant or from its structure?” 
The Missouri Botanical Garden Bulletin also notes that Sir 
