1876.] Botany. ` 553 
It may now be added that the character “ rhizomate bulboso-tuber- 
osa,” by Dr. Torrey, is by no means correct, and the “root a tuberous 
thizoma,” of Dr. Chapman, is still less applicable to any species except 
S. Elliott’, and not perhaps properly to that. S. eroceum and S. Texa- 
num have a small but distinct tunicated bulb, the coats fleshy and not 
numerous, and from the base of this apparently a fusiform root proceeds. 
S. album shows a similar bulb, from the corner of which beneath springs 
a cluster of rootlets. Our specimens of S. Elliotti?, all from Dr. Chap- 
man, are indeed destitute of bulb, and show something like a rhizoma. 
Good specimens showing the underground growth of all these plants are 
how much wanted. 
S. Elliottii not rarely branches its raceme into a panicle. This genus, 
therefore, presents two difficulties in the way of Mr. Baker’s new ar- 
rangement of the Liliaceous tribes. It seems to me not remotely re- 
lated to Nolina ; but the pedicels are always solitary. — A. GRAY. 
SEDUM REFLEXUM L.— This Old World Sedum, which is occasion- 
ally met with in old-fashioned gardens, has established itself at Pigeon 
Cove, Essex County, Mass., as we learn from Mrs. Alonzo Wheeler, who 
has sent living specimens. It occupies an old stone-heap, in a patch a 
` yard or two in diameter, where “ Mrs. Sarah Ann Colburn says she no- 
ticed it when she was a very little girl, at least sixty years ago,” and 
whence she transplanted some of it to the cemetery at Folly Cove, thir- 
teen years ago. As the station of the plant is only a few rods distant 
from the ancient dwelling known as “the Garrison House” (a view of 
Which in a wood-cut adorns the twenty-first page of Mr. Leonard’s Pig- 
ton Cove and Vicinity), we cannot doubt that it is an escape from gar- 
dens, although the species is not handsome enough to reward cultivation, 
e plants still carry some marks of former cultivation : first, in the 
augmentation of the normal number of parts in the blossom. Instead of 
five in the calyx and corolla, or even six, which is not rare in the wild 
Plant in Europe, there are mostly from seven to nine or ten, so that the 
Plant assumes the technical character of Sempervivum. Secondly, these 
flowers are apt to run together into a sort of crest, and to make a some- 
What fasciated inflorescence, or a dense cluster, from which, later, pedicels 
Spring in a proliferous manner. We do not wonder that Mrs. Wheeler 
Was puzzled with it. Still she divined that it was some vagarious Sedum, 
hot in the ordinary books. — A. Gray. 
A New Fir or THE Rocky Mountains. — While collecting in the 
Wasatch Mountains, in Eastern Utah, last summer, for Major Powell's 
Survey of the Colorado, I obtained five species of fir, two of which pos- 
ad à Special interest, growing out of the confusion which has heretofore 
existed respecting the group to which they belong, and the fact that one 
of them bids fair to be established as a new species. The other turns 
E O be Abies concolor Eng., and not A. grandis Lindl., as was sup- 
Posed, and under which name this tree has been several times reported. 
