May 15, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



193 



Botanical Notes from Texas. — XXV. 



Wayside Flowers. — The spreading Senebiera didyma is 

 certainly entitled to this name. In the cities of the state, 

 and as far north as Little Rock, Arkansas, it is very com- 

 mon everywhere, underfoot along the streets and often 

 attempting to climb the exposed brick walls of buildings. 

 The species may readily be detected by its variously cut 

 leaves, the strong and almost fetid volatile oil which it e.x- 

 hales, and by the twin pods which justify its individual 

 name. 



The East Indian Strawberry, Fragaria Indica, now com- 

 monly introduced into the more eastern Gulf states, is 

 often to be seen in the streets of Te.xas cities. It has a large 

 foliaceous calyx, yellow flowers, and bears insipid dark red 

 fruit. In riding through southern Arkansas, I heard at a rail- 

 way station enterprising boys shouting "fine ripe strawber- 

 ries '' ; they vi'ere selling this species for the genuine article. 

 After the boys had received their ten cents a box for the 

 berries and the train had moved on, the profanity of the 

 travelers who tested the fruit did the sellers no harm. All 

 the Texas species of Tissa delight to be literally in the 

 way and where they are most liable to be trodden upon. 

 We have several other small Pinks which delight in human 

 society, and they are more common in cities than in the 

 country. Mollugo verticillata. Carpet-weed, is far more 

 abundant along railways and wagon-roads and in streets 

 than elsewhere. Its more rare relative, M. Cerviana, is 

 sure to develop the same living ways. 



Monolepis chenopodioides is another plant which, though 

 called a desert plant, is common by the wayside in many 

 of the cities of Texas, from Galveston northward and west- 

 ward. It belongs to the Chenopods, most of which are 

 denizens of tovi'ns and cultivated fields, as much as is the 

 species once thought to be peculiar in that respect, and so 

 named Chenopodium urbicum. C. ambrosioides, Mexican 

 Tea, and its variety, Anthelminticum,Wormseed, are seldom 

 to be seen outside of towns and cities. The so far as known 

 exclusively Texan Galactia, G. heterophylla, wherever I 

 have seen it, takes readily to town life, or clings with 

 tenacity to its old ways of living in spite of town building. 

 Hundreds of plants of this species grow in Llano in the 

 streets, close to the wagon tracks, and often on the ridges 

 between the tracks. 



The misnamed California " Clovers," Medics, humble 

 yellow-flowered relatives of Alfalfa, are oftener found in 

 cities and along railways than elsewhere. The species 

 with purple-spotted leaves is rarer than that with unmarked 

 and smaller leaflets. Both species may, in fruit, be easily 

 distinguished from true Clovers by their tightly coiled 

 bristly pods. The Geranium-like Erodium cicutarium, 

 Alfilaria, Pin Clover, another misnomer, is cultivated some- 

 times for forage. I have only seen it between the ties on 

 raihvays. E. macrophyllum grows at Austin- in the state- 

 house grounds. E. Texanum is common south-westward, 

 especially around San Marcos. 



Some Grasses have assumed the same ways of living as 

 their supposed higher and more aristocratic plant neigh- 

 bors. Common Buffalo Grass is not so near extinction as 

 some of its botanical friends have intimated. The paucity 

 of the seed-bearing form may largely tend to keep the spe- 

 cies from literal dissemination, but the stoloniferous way 

 of growing that both forms possess will keep it common. 

 Ii is creeping along railways everywhere within its ex- 

 tended range, from (ialveston Island to Manitoba, and from 

 eastern Kansas to the mountains. The species is more 

 liable to become a sharp competitor of Bermuda Grass 

 than to become exterminated. The handsome Oplismenus 

 setarius shows the same tendency as Buffalo Grass, and 

 leaves woods for railways when an opportunity presents 

 itself. This grass is sometimes utilized for " hanging bas- 

 ket" culture, for which it is well adapted. Its stems may 

 become three to four feet long. It grows from Louisiana 

 to San Antonio Springs, and nearly across eastern Texas 

 from the Gulf to the Red River, so it is easily attainable. 



.The philosophy of the ways of living that town and way- 

 side plants have adopted may rest in the fact that most of 

 these are creeping or, at least, prostrate plants. Pressing 

 them in close contact with the ground would enable them 

 to root more readily, and so to grow and spread more rap- 

 idly. The so-called introduced useful plants are more com- 

 mon in cities, as they usually have their seeds first scattered 

 there. Botanists soon learn that towns, cemeteries, and 

 especially railways, afford excellent fields for the study and 

 collection of plants. The broken ground there, the seeds 

 scattered by human beings or live stock as they ride along, 

 and the usually fenced condition of railways, allow plants 

 to remain there in security, while they are destroyed in the 

 pastures. There also introduced plants find lodgment and 

 protection. 



Cursicana, Tex. 



E. N. Plank. 



The Saguenay Region. — II. 



AUGUST is the month for the ripening of blueberries in 

 _/~\_ this latitude. They grow in the greatest profusion 

 on the rocky ridges and in the Pine-lands. Two kinds 

 were noticed, the Dvi'arf Blueberry, Vaccinium Pennsyl- 

 vanicum, and the Canada Blueberry. Both mature here at 

 essentially the same time, though the two differ in this 

 respect by several weeks farther south. In the vicinity of 

 Cnicago the Dwarf Blueberry is the earliest of all, ripen- 

 ing the last of June, and the Canada Blueberry comes on 

 three or four weeks afterward. This difference in time 

 lessens as we go northward. The berries were large and 

 of the best quality. They hang upon the bushes till all are 

 ripe, and remain plump and fresh until the early frost over- 

 takes them. The two kinds were frequently so intermingled 

 as to make it difficult to decide whether there was any 

 choice of soil or habitat by either species, as is generally 

 the case in other localities u'here I have seen them, the 

 Dwarf Blaeberry taking to dry and rocky land, and the 

 Canada Blueberry to damper conditions. The blueberry 

 season makes a kind of harvest-time for the farmers and 

 villagers, who go out to gather them, the entire household 

 often taking part in the work. Few but French Canadians 

 live here permanently, and they are mostly poor or with 

 small holdings. The sale of the Bluets, as they call the 

 berries, supplements their scanty incomes, although they 

 dispose of them at one cent a quart. A lady who had been 

 at St. Alphonse for some seasons said that it was looked 

 upon as unprecedented when thirty cents were obtained 

 for twenty-five quarts. The great abundance of the ber- 

 ries and comparative absence of green fruit enable the 

 pickers to gather them with rapidity, and a skillful hand 

 will take from one to two bushels a day. They are partly 

 sold to canning establishments, run by persons who come 

 in for the season, and are partly sent away in boxes. As 

 they chiefly grow on land useless for tillage, and the sup- 

 ply is so great that a large percentage of the berries must 

 annually go to waste, they provide a source of revenue for 

 an indefinite time to come. 



Another plant of the Heath family furnishes a product 

 for home consumption, the Cowberry, or Mountain Cran- 

 berry, Vaccinium Vitis-Ida^'a. It is used like the common 

 cranberry. Before I had found them in the fields some 

 were handed me by a farmer in whose house I happened 

 to be. Finding they were not the common cranberry, I 

 inquired vi'here they grew, and subsequently came across 

 them on the rocks. The shining leaves and bright red 

 berries, borne a little above the surface of the ground on 

 short stems, werd- always an attractive sight. The fair 

 round fruit suggested the propriety of one of the common 

 names they have among the French Canadians, Pommes 

 deTerre, Earth Apples, which seems even more appropriate 

 than when applied to the common potato. They are also 

 known to the people by the same name they bear among 

 the French of the Old World, Aigrelles ponctuees, or Dotted 

 Bilberries, since the under surface of the leaves is sprinkled 

 with blackish points. The Cowberry was sometimes asso- 

 ciated with another slender vine or prostrate shrub, the 



