February 21, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



75 



years earlier by Dr. Boykin near Milledgeville, Georgia 

 and near Macon by Professor Darby, and in the neighbor- 

 hood of Lincolnton, in North Carolina, by Mr. M. A. Cur- 

 tis. Nothing more was seen or heard of Darbya until the 

 spring of 1882, when Dr. Charles Mohr found the staminate 

 plant on Sand Mountain, in Cullman County, Alabama, 

 south of the Tennessee River. In the spring of 1886 Miss 

 K. A. Taylor, of Baltimore, found staminate plants near 

 Columbia, South Carolina, and two years later the pistil- 

 late plant in the same locality ; and the following notes 



Oak, Hickory and other deciduous-leaved trees and shrubs. 

 The soil is light, loose white sand, without stones, and is 

 overlaid with a thick covering of leaf-mold. 



The Darbya flourishes alike in sunny and shady situations. 

 The roots are several yards long, an eighth to half an inch in 

 diameter, dark red on the outside, white within, with rootlets 

 at intervals of an inch or more ; they branch every foot or so, 

 and run in straight lines through the leaf-mold about two to 

 six inches below the surface, crossing each other frequently 

 and sending up shoots sometimes an inch and sometimes 

 several feet apart. The leaves are always much larger on tin- 

 pistillate than on the staminate plants. The two grow thickly 



Fig. 16. — Darbya umbellata. 



1. A flowering branch of the staminate plant, natural size. 2. A flowering brancli of 

 flower, enlarged. 5. Vertical section of a staminate flower, enlarged. 6. A 



8. Vertical section of a fruit, enlarged 



from her pen give the best account of the habit and mode 

 of growth of this extremely rare and interesting plant, 

 which has not yet been brought into cultivation : 



A few years ago (1886) I collected some specimens of the 

 staminate plant, not then knowing its name or rarity. This 

 year, in the middle of April, I made a thorough search in the 

 same woods, about two miles south of Columbia, and found 

 both staminate and pistillate plants growing in the greatest 

 abundance and covering acres. The ground is high, and cov- 

 ered with woods composed of a few Pines, but principally of 



the pistillate plant, natural size. 3. A fruiting branch, natural size. 4. A staminate 

 pistillate flower, enlarged. 7. Vertical section of a pistillate flower, enlarged. 

 9. An embryo, much magnified. 



and cover much ground, although the plants of the two sexes 

 are never mingled, the groups being in no case, I think, nearer 

 to one another than one .hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 yards. The plants grow from twelve to thirty-three inches 

 high, and both kinds~of Mowers have a sweet musk-like odor. 

 I noticed many small black ants visiting the flowers, and find- 

 ing, apparently, something attractive at the base of the 

 stamens. 



In 1888 Dr. Hyams also found fruiting plants of Darbya 

 near Charlotte, North Carolina. C. S. S. 



