THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



57 



tlie cMld. The trumpet leaved pitcher-plants with their 

 tall royal cups of gold are most fittingly thus named in 

 ISIorth Carolina; but all the small pitchers {Sarracenia) 

 -and the masses of yellow butterworts in the turpentine 

 belt are buttercups. — Mrs, A, E. Goetting.^ Cincinnati^ O. 



Fragrant Grasses. — Most flower lovers are familiar 

 with the pleasant fragrance of the common sweet vernal 

 :grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum) but it may be new to 

 many that there are other grasses with sufficient fra- 

 grance to make them commercially valuable. The lemon 

 grass {Andropogon schoenanthus) of the tropics yields an 

 oil with a strong odor of lemon and an allied species (An- 

 dropogon nardus is the plant from which citronella oil is 

 distilled. The amount of this latter oil imported into the 

 United States amounts to several hundred thousand 

 pounds annually. 



An Early Texas Flower.— The earliest bloomer of 

 this section, that I know of, is a small umbelliferous plant. 

 When the season is open, as it generally is in Texas, you 

 may frequently find the blossom opening at Christmas, 

 though as a rule, they appear a month later. The root is 

 a tuber, generally round and frequently as big as a wal- 

 nut. It consists of a white aromatic substance but I 

 never noticed that any animal eats it. The first flowers 

 are on very short stalks keeping close to the grajdsh rock^^ 

 soil in which the plant delights to grow; but as modest 

 and inconspicuous as they are, the bees, if the weather 

 permits, are not long in discovering them and the buzzing 

 of these little workers, helps one to find the flower. In 

 March the plant often has flowers and seeds at the same 

 time and on longer stalks. The foliage has very much the 

 appearance of the leaves of certain Escholtzias. I do not 

 know of any common name for it. Pepper-and-salt, a 

 name that is applied to an early umbellifer of the E?vStern 

 States would have fit this plant as well, as the purple 

 anthers contrast strongly with the white corolla. Its 

 scientific name is Phellopterus macrorhizus. 



