198 MISS A. M. GELDART ON STRATIOTES ALOIDES, I.. 
I wondered how far our British Botanists might have 
followed Linne without examining the plant for themselves. 
Only this morning (Nov. 28, 1905) I received a letter from 
Mr. A. Bruce Jackson in which he says : — “ I first met with 
Stratiotes in 1900, when I found a small pond near the water- 
works at Sandown, full of it. Townsend in his ‘ Flora of 
Hampshire ’ refers to it as naturalised in the I. of Wight, 
together with Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae and Villarsia by 
Dr. Salter in a small pool about 2 miles from Ryde on the 
Brading road. This locality is only a few miles from the one 
at Sandown, but the plant appeared to be quite wild in the 
pond where I saw it and was in full flower. The flowers are 
described in the books as being dioecious, but those I examined 
in the Sandown plants had anthers on the usually barren 
stamens of the female flowers, and that this character is not 
uncommon is borne out by the following note which I have 
extracted from the Journal of Botany for 1875 : — ‘ (p. 239) 
Prof. Nolte in his classical paper on this plant and Prof. De 
Vriese, in his more recent observations on its geographical distri- 
bution state that only the female plant is known to occur in 
Great Britain and Ireland. Dr. Boswell (late Syme) also 
says in Eng. Bot. 3rd ed. that he has seen no male flowers ; 
but he adds that anthers are occasionally produced on the 
usually barren stamens of the female flowers. Mr. Leighton 
in his ‘ Flora of Shropshire ’ (p. 254) indeed considers 
the plant hermaphrodite, and describes the pollen. It is 
usually considered dioecious, but on this subject attention 
may be drawn to a paper by Dr. Lindberg, read before 
the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and reported in this 
Journal of 1872 (p. 317)* in which he shows that Hydrocharis, 
also generally deemed dioecious is in reality monoecious; 
the apparently separate plants being connected by branches 
under water. He says he has never seen a truly male plant.’ ” 
Mr. Arthur Bennett had also drawn my attention to this 
extract and suggested that Stratiotes may resemble Hydro- 
charis in this subaquaeous connection. 
Mr. A. B. Jackson is the first of my correspondents to 
definitely assert that he has seen anthers in the female flower, 
* Also in Trans, of Bot. Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. xi. p. 389. 
