l86 MISS A. M. GELDART ON STRATIOTES ALOIDES, L. 
nated. The plant is fairly common in a black peaty seam 
at the foot of Beeston Cliff, but elsewhere is rare. I have 
no new localities to add since my book was published, and 
the fossil seeds seem to be confined to Norfolk and Suffolk.” 
LIFE HISTORY. 
After the plant has gone off flower in August, a vertical 
section of the lower part shows that all the leaves lie pressed 
round one another, decreasing in size towards the centre 
(Nolte t. i. figs 2 and 4). They spring from a thick fleshy 
body, somewhat concave on the upper part, 1 to ij inches 
across, and 4-6 lines high, showing in the interior a yellowish 
somewhat concave roundish mass of faintly striated tissue ; 
outside this a whiter looser mass, the two separated by a layer 
of thickened cell-tissue. Nolte calls this rootstock a bulb ; 
it is now considered to be an abbreviated stem. The leaves 
surrounding this body are each separately enclosed at the 
point of attachment by close-fitting small whitish membranous 
scales, so that, if one breaks off all the leaves carefully at 
their base, the rootstock appears occupied by numerous small 
chaff-leaves (Nolte, t. i., fig. 5). 
The fleshy body only protrudes rootfibres on the under 
part ; the roots springing directly from the inner mass. They 
are quite simple, very long, cylindrical, some lines thick, 
smooth, soft, and white. In Norfolk specimens, the rootlets 
when first protruded and until at least an inch long, are some- 
times bright green, a section in such cases showing that this 
colour encircles the yellow rootlet before it emerges from the 
rootstock. I have seen on Rockland Broad, fullgrown sub- 
merged plants late in December with green rootlets an inch 
long, evidently protruded late in the season, the long white 
roots being rotten or having fallen off. Johnson (Ger. em. 
1633) says : — “ instead of roots there be long strings, round, 
white, very like to great harpstrings or long worms which 
falling down from a short head that brought forth the leaves, 
go to the bottome of the water, and yet be they seldome there 
fastned.” On the lower part they are bordered with very 
