82 Cyamas luteus. 



period it has been more abundant than before, whence it is fair to con- 

 clude that some unpropitious circumstance in those seasons had re- 

 tarded its growth, though the root had remained uninjured or undi- 

 minished. There is a white variety described by Walter. Our plant 

 is always straw-yellow, but the colour of the petals docs not seem to 

 be constant in this plant. In Europe the colour is pale rose-red or 

 white, and in the Chinese paintings of the plant, which represent it 

 very perfectly, they are uniformly rose-red, with darker stripes of this 

 hue, which, converging towards the apices of the petals, renders them 

 of a deep red. Writers have described the receptacle of the foreign 

 plant as separating spontaneously from its peduncle and floating down 

 the river in which the plant may grow, the seeds vegetating in the peri- 

 carp, finally bursting from their bed, and dropping into the mud, take 

 root and produce new plants. I have had an opportunity of witness- 

 ing this fact in our plant, since it grows in stagnant ditches in the 

 Neck and has never appeared along the shores of the Delaware, 

 though within one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards of its banks. 

 1 have, however, remarked, that the pericarp drops in the autumn 

 from the peduncle, and that the fruit may be said to be viviparous, 

 germinating the same season. It is ripened like the seeds of Orontium 

 aquaticum, Symplocarpus, different species of Arum, and other 

 aquatic plants. Efforts at cultivating this plant, and multiplying its 

 sites of growth have been unsuccessfully made in the neighbourhood 

 of this city. It appears to thrive only in the spot where nature lias 

 planted it, and where it certainly appears to be indigenous. The 



