THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
we thought it had been, we found some of it below ground, 
where it was waiting dormant for its next year's short lease 
of life in the world above. Carefully digging it up we sent 
it to our California friend and also to Dr. Robinson, of 
Harvard. Dr. Robinson wrote us it was Dkhondra repens, 
of the Convolvulus family. Looking up this species in the 
Botany of California, we found that it has a yellow corolla, 
but no mention of an underground habit of seed-making. 
Now, so far, we had not found any corolla, and doubted 
our plant's having any. In August we again searched out 
the plant, no vestige of it remaining above ground. The 
seeds this time were matured and we gathered some for our 
seed collection, less than a dozen. There was no doubt 
of the Convolvulus now. but the plant's original ways were 
still to be studied, and we resolved to see it every month of 
the next year. So in the meantime all available literature 
on cleistogamous plants was read, and we found that a few 
plants flower above ground and then bend down and bury 
their heads to mature their seeds. Some have no real flower, 
but turn from buds to seed capsules. Not one, however, 
but at some time was living above ground. Now, our 
plant grew its seed below ground on stems from an eighth 
to a fourth of an inch long, and so never coming within an 
inch of the surface. 
Beginning the next spring as early as seemed reason- 
able — m March — ^we found our plant just peeping above 
ground, with no signs of flowers, so now only April re- 
mained in which it might show its cordla to the world if it 
ever had any. April found me just trying to recover from 
an illness that left a bad cough ; so to the mountains I was 
sent, and must wait one whole year to read the April install- 
ment of my storj'. But the years slip away, and when an- 
other April came my interest in the little Dichondra was as 
fresh as ever, and to the beach we went, solely to look it up 
