MISCELLANEOUS PLANTS 



191 



teen sand-keys lying west of Key West off the Florida coast ; but in 

 all but two cases it was only represented by a single colony. The 

 plant grows commonly on the Bermudian beaches. 



It would be unnecessary to give all the data relating to the wide 

 distribution of this shore plant in the warm regions of the New 

 World; but a reference to a few localities which have particular 

 interest may here be made. In the first place, its occurrence on the 

 Pacific coast is not usually stated. However, I found it on the 

 Ecuador coast at Puerto Bolivar and on the beach at Panama. 

 Then, again, Harshberger includes it among the strand plants of 

 the delta of the Mississippi and of the Louisiana coast (Phyt. Surv. 

 N. A., pp. 215, 444). In some localities it grows in great profusion. 

 Thus Millspaugh at Santurce, Porto Rico, found it growing on sandy 

 fields near the sea " in great quantity, massing the surface of many 

 acres " (Plantce Utowance). Amongst interesting insular localities 

 may be mentioned Fernando Noronha. Though it was not recorded 

 by Hemsley amongst the collections made by Moseley during the 

 voyage of the Challenger (1873-76), Ridley observed it growing 

 plentifully in 1887 ( Journ Linn. Soc., vol. 27). 



It may be remarked in connection with the statement now and 

 then made that the floating pods assist in the dispersal of the species, 

 that this would not happen under normal conditions. The pod 

 dehisces on the plant and often discharges its seeds with some force, 

 a habit common with legumes, where the valves develop a spiral 

 twist when drying. A detached fruit which I had placed in the sun in 

 Tobago burst with an explosion like that of a pistol and threw the 

 seeds ten to twelve feet away. Should an unopened pod be torn 

 from the parent plant and carried off by the waves, the attachment 

 of the valves would soon be loosened and the seeds would soon be 

 liberated and float away. 



Cassytha filiformis, Linn. 

 Cassytha Americana, Nees 



Since Bentham unites the wide-ranging American form Cassytha 

 americana with the widely distributed Old World form C. filiformis, 

 we have here a species spread over the warm regions of the globe, 

 in Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, but chiefly, as Hemsley 

 remarks, in maritime districts (Chall. Bot., IV., 185). It is one of the 

 Dodder Laurels, a tropical genus holding at least fifteen or sixteen 

 species, of which two-thirds are Australian. It is noteworthy that 

 this species has been recorded from almost every group of the tropical 

 Pacific, from the Paumotu Archipelago and Tahiti to Fiji and north- 

 ward to Hawaii. When I met with it in the West Indies I renewed 

 acquaintance with a plant with which I had already been very familiar 

 in Hawaii and Fiji, the results of my numerous observations in the 

 Pacific being given in my previous book on plant dispersal in those 

 regions. 



In Hawaii this parasite is occasionally found growing on the beach 

 plants, but it prefers the lower open-wooded region and especially 

 the surface of old lava-flows near the coast. In Fiji it is typ. ^ally 



