403 
Arum maculatum from the Seed . 
about 2 cms. below the surface. On turning up the soil 
in October for new specimens, none were to be found, and 
it was not until the soil had been turned up almost 7 cms. 
that the missing tubers were discovered (Fig. 6). Probably 
the soil in the flower-pot was looser than it would have been 
under natural conditions, and this may perhaps have tended 
to increase the effect of the pull. If a young tuber be re- 
planted near the surface, it will send out new contractile roots, 
and in a week will regain its normal depth. 
With practice it is quite easy to find seedlings in any 
stage in nature, even when in the winter resting- condition, 
by learning the exact depth at which they are to be found 
at the various times of year. 
This is the end of the second season’s growth ; the whole 
process has up to this time been carried on underground, and 
no chlorophyll has been formed. 
In the following spring the first ovate leaf, with its two 
scale-leaves, appears above ground (Fig. 7) ; the tuber continues 
to grow in size until June, when next year’s tuber is formed. 
New roots now arise, some of which are contractile. The 
leaf withers and the tuber is drawn still deeper into the 
ground, this time shifting its position as a rule from vertical 
to horizontal. 
It is not, at any rate, until the fourth season, and generally 
later, that the first sagittate leaves are found. The mature 
flowering plant (Fig. 10) generally bears three sagittate leaves 
and two scale-leaves, the inflorescence being enclosed in the 
sheathing petiole of the innermost leaf (Fig. 9). 
It will be seen from this description of the seedling-plant, 
that a vegetatively produced plant arising, as it generally 
does, from the lower surface of the mature tuber (Fig. 10 A), 
in addition to the advantage of procuring its food-stuff ready 
made, has a further very great advantage over the plant pro- 
duced from seed, in starting from the first at its normal depth 
in the ground. In this way it eliminates the risk of being 
eaten up by thrushes or scratched up by animals, and also 
saves itself a large amount of unnecessary expenditure of 
