- 7 6- 



species, giving it Mr. Davenport's provisional herbarium name. 



It would be very gratifying to all lovers of ferns if these two, 

 perhaps the rarest in North American herbaria, were rediscovered. 

 But the places of their growth are visited by botanists seldom, and 

 then hurriedly ; should any have the opportunity of making a more 

 thorough search, these notes will enable them to find the exact 

 original stations. That a plant should be found in a single limited 

 area is by no means common in Southern California, and notably 

 in the desert region. Indeed the localization of plants is one of 

 the marked features of the desert flora. One is very apt to find in 

 each of the neighboring canons, presenting, apparently, exactly 

 the same environment, a plant or two which he may be unable to 

 find in the others, or, even, may never see again. Possibly a very 

 thorough knowledge of the desert might prove that this localiza- 

 tion is less real than it appears to the casual botanist; but this 

 knowledge no one has. In my own explorations there are not a 

 few plants which I have seen but once, and in one small area. I 

 have collected Notholcena tenera in two places, finding at both a 

 very scanty growth; one of these places I several times revisited, 

 but without again finding the fern, although searched for. Another 

 instance which comes to my mind is of a cucurbit which years ago 

 my good friend, Mr. Vf. G. Wright, and I found in another little 

 canon of the same San Jacinto Mountain, and which has since 

 been described as Brandegea parviflora Watson. I can go to the 

 exact rock-cliff where it grew, and have been there several times 

 since, at the right time of the year, and have searched the canon 

 from end to end, and not a sign of it was to be found; nor has it 

 been rediscovered elsewhere, and only the scanty types represent 

 this excellent species in herbaria. Like instances could be mul- 

 tiplied readily. 



A Correction. — In The Fern Bulletin for April, 1900, I de- 

 scribed a supposed peculiarity in the period of growth of Polypo- 

 dium Calif ornicum ; namely, that at low altitudes it grew in 

 winter and rested in summer, while at high altitudes the periods 

 of growth and resting were reversed. It is a pity to have to give 

 up such a beautiful example of the adaptation of a plant to its 

 environment; but a little more knowledge makes this necessary. 

 For it happens that the summer-growing fern of the high moun- 

 tains is not P. Calif ornicum at all, but the widespread P. vulgar e. 

 It was many years since I had seen this little fern in its rare moun- 

 tain haunts, and as no one suspected that P. vulgar e grew within 



