MISS A. M. GELDART ON STRATIOTES ALOIDES. I . l8l 
II. 
STRATIOTES ALOIDES, L. 
By Alice M. Geldart. 
Read 28th November , 1905. 
On the occasion of the excursion of this Society to Sutton 
(E. Norfolk) on the 21st of June last, our attention was 
drawn to plants of Stratiotes Aloides, then in flower. The 
ovary of one of the plants was already swelling and had 
turned hard ; this led to discussion, as the female plant onlv 
is known in Britain. I asked Mr. Arthur Bennett, F.L.S., 
for information. With much kindness he replied (in litt.). 
“ I am sending you Nolte’s classic work on Stratiotes which 
may interest you. Keep it as long as you like, perhaps you 
would like to show it at one of next Session’s Meetings. 
Stratiotes is not one of the species I propose to write.” 
Mr. Bennett says that he has never seen the fruit, and had 
no opportunity of studying the plant in situ. Mr. Nicholson 
asked me to show Nolte’s book this evening, and suggested 
that further notes and diagrams would be acceptable, with 
some account of the plant as Nolte represents it. 
Dr. Ernst Ferdinand Nolte, Professor of Botany at Kiel, 
was occupied for several years in compiling a Flora of the 
Duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg. Intending to issue 
separate original treatises on some of the native plants, and 
to incorporate only the final conclusions in the Flora, he was 
particularly attracted to the Water Plants, and combines 
Sagittaria sagittifolia with Stratiotes Aloides in this book. 
He studied Stratiotes in Lauenburg during the summer of 
1824, worked at Copenhagen during the following autumn 
and winter, and published the book there in 1825. I am 
only dealing with the part that refers to Stratiotes. 
