68 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



with a specimen its name and external characteristics must be 

 known. After classification comes studies of the internal struc- 

 ture followed by investigations of function, "environment and 

 inheritance. Although the mere naming of plants belongs to 

 the elementary stages of botany a large number of our botanists 

 have never gotten beyond it and many probably never will. To 

 them a new species bulks larger than any fact or principle of 

 ecolog}^, physiology, or evolution. The more advanced think- 

 ers, however, have gone on to studies of ecology and genetics 

 and though these should logically follow one another they have 

 been taken up so nearly simultaneously that they have been 

 somewhat telescoped. A writer in Science dubs work in 

 naming plants ''Manual labor" and rejoices that the botany of 

 the schools is no longer a half year's study of Gray's manual 

 followed by a second half year of the same kind. It is rather 

 early to rejoice, however. A large number of schools still do 

 very little except ''analyze" plants and the botanizer is seldom 

 interested in anything else. As a class, the people interested in 

 plants have not discovered that the days of the pioneer are past. 



Varying Rudbeckias. — Miss Caroline Grey Soule 

 writes: "Let anyone working up Rudbeckias go to Vermont. 

 I have found the variety with brown on the lower half of the 

 rays, the double flower and the quilled rays in single and double 

 flowers, some much like Dahlia in form. All have been found 

 in nine summers at Brandon, Vermont, and the first three 

 forms at Tyson, also." It often happens that a plant in a new 

 habitat produces a greater number of new forms than it does 

 in its original home. This is probably due to the efforts of 

 the species to adjust itself to new conditions. Wild flowers 

 removed to cultivation act in a similar w^ay. Rudbeckia is an 

 immigrant in Vermont. Probably its endeavors to conquer 

 the country accounts for the variations observed. 



Water Plantain in Southern California. — Last 

 August I found quite a colony of the water plantain (Alisma 



