THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
man. It bears several flowers on a stem, each with an erect 
hp at the top of the flower. This goes to show that the ovary 
has not the usual twist of this family. 
This article is already too long, or we might go on to 
enumerate and describe many other of our native plants, the 
fringed orchids, the maiden's tresses, the coral roots, etc. 
Mr. Weller's advice in letter-writing is, however, applicable 
to magazine articles as well. It is best to stop where the 
reader may demand more, or where one's feeling for the 
golden rule warns him to do as he would be done by. 
Brown University, Providence, R. I. 
BOTANY FOR BEGINNERS.— XXII. 
ORDER 6— ARALES. 
T N the older botanical works the palms and the arums were 
placed together in a division called the Spadici florae, 
in allusion to the spadix which characterizes many of them. 
But if we define a spadix as a fleshy spike of flowers, the 
palms would scarcely have a claim to being included. As 
a matter of fact, palms and arums are now placed in sepa- 
rate orders, but that they are closely related is shown by 
the structure of the flowering parts. Practically all of them 
have their flower-clusters surrounded by a large bract or 
spathe. It is interesting to glance back over the less highly 
organized orders of plant life and note the gradual rise 
of this bract. Among the grasses it is a mere green scale; 
in the palms it is often large and thick, but scarcely flower- 
like, while in the arum family it becomes thinner, of various 
bright colors and curious forms, and so petal -like that the 
whole flower-cluster, with its enclosing spadie, is often 
regarded as a single blossom. In reality, this kind of an 
arum "flower" is comparable with such a "flower" as the 
daisy, which consists of many small flowers in a head. 
