THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
57 
dug it up out of the limbo of antiquity about one hundred 
and forty years later. A few followed this leader and called 
the plants Raripa, but they had their trouble for nothing. 
Another botanist has now found a name given four years 
earlier and the world is asked to call the plants Radicula. 
Why not call the w^hole proceedings Ridiculous and be done 
with it? 
Seed Dispersed in the Conifers. — There are two 
misconceptions prevalent about the conifers. The first is, 
that all plants belonging to this group are evergreen, and 
the second, that all bear cones. The larch or tamarack 
(Lari.v Americana) is a good example of one of these "ever- 
green" trees that is not evergreen, and the cypress {Tax- 
odiiun distichuni) is another. The behavior of this latter 
tree is the more surprising, since it is an inhabitant of the 
South and apparently not obliged to cast its leaves in au- 
tumn, as are the broad-leaved trees farther north. Not con- 
tent with dropping all its leaves, it often drops some of its 
young twigs as well. All the trees belonging to the group 
are cone-bearers, at least by courtesy, though the fruits of 
some are as little like cones as they could be. That of the 
yew appears like a fleshy red drupe and the berries of the 
juniper are well known. In these cases the fruit is modified 
for distribution by birds or other animals. In the trees that 
bear cones of the familiar form, the seeds have a wing-like 
expansion of the seed-coat that aids their distribution by 
wind. The erratic cypress has still another method. Its 
cones are small, spherical, composed of ver\- few scales, and 
fall to pieces at maturity. The seeds are surrounded by a 
thick, cork-like layer, which is apparently designed as a float 
for distribution by water, and the early breaking up of the 
cone thus facilitates the process. Since the cypress grows 
in marshy places or in standing water, this adaptation for 
distributing the seed is a most successful one. 
