24 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
with the harrow, and let them bake on top of the soil throughout 
the dry season, and yet when it comes time for them to display 
their red flags they will do so just as if nothing had happened. 
Tree ferns at sea level are another surprise ; and of three spec- 
ies at that. Tahcniaciiiontanca coronaria has escaped from cul- 
tivation. The Amazon lily is also escaping. And I have seen 
Crinitm ainahile, a three-dollar bulb from Sumatra growing lux- 
uriantly in a road side thicket. Our sister Island, Jamaica, 
abo'Unds with ferns of all families : but I doubt if tlie collector 
could find one-half of her five hundred or more species on thib 
Island. 
Porto Rico. 
THE FRUIT OF THE ^lAY APPLE. 
The May Apple {Podopliylluiii pcltatuin) seems to have been 
so named because it ripens in July instead of in ]\Iay. In many a 
youngster's mind the season for May Apples and Sunday school 
picnics are inseparably associated for no wide-awake boy ever 
spent a whole day in the woods without investigating every likely 
object in the vicinity which of course includes this fruit. On the 
subject of its edibleness Mr. C. F. Saunders writes entertaining- 
ly in the Philadelphia Record as follows : 
"But the great mid-summer crop of the woods is the ]May apple 
yield. Everybody knows this common plant in the spring, when 
the appearance of the umbrella-like leaves is the delight of the 
children. As summer advances the foliage turns yellow and be- 
comes bedraggled, and the pear-shaped fruit, about the size of a 
butternut in the hull, grows to be the prominent feature. This is 
now ripe. 
Though possessing a rank, disagreeable odor when green, this 
fruit at the time of maturity is delightfully fragrant, with a per- 
fume hard to define, but combining the characteristic smells of 
cantaloupes, summer apples and fox grapes. Two or three 
Lrcught in and laid on the mantel will perfume the whole room. 
As to the edibleness of the fruit, that is a matter of taste : some 
people loathe it, while others are very fond of it. It ought not 
to be condemned, however, on the evidence of unripe specimens. 
