NOTE AND COMMENT

WANTED.-Short notes of interest to the general botanist are always in demand for this department. Our readers are invited to make this the place of publication for their botanical items. It should be noted that the magazine is issued as soon as possible after the fifteenth of each month.

INJURED SYCAMORES.-In the 18th Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden Hermann Von Schrenk reports that in Missouri and various other parts of the country the young leaves of the sycamore were killed by the severe frosts in the spring of 1907. While it is not to be doubted that sycamore leaves may occasionally be killed by frost, yet the fact remains that some sort of fungus attacks the young leaves making it a difficult matter, at first glance, to decide whether the injury was caused by frost or fungus.

PLANT DISTRIBUTION.-Every species inhabits the areas which it has been able to reach and occupy from the starting point of its place of origin. Neither its birth-place nor any of the places within its range may offer the most suitable conditions for the best growth and highest development. Beyond seas, over mountain ranges, across the equator or past other equally effective barriers, may lie plains, valleys, plateaus and even continents, where if once introduced it might overbear all competition from the plants already there, extending its distribution a million-fold. Let the barriers be once passed and it enters into a new kingdom as the various invasions of weeds amply testify. The soil, the various factors of climate, the course of the seasons and the actual composition of the plant

covering already present in the region, may be such that the intruder becomes an integral part of the flora and it may indeed perish in its original habitat and in the places successively occupied by it, leaving us no clew as to its place of origin. -D. T. MacDougal, in Plant World.

LAW AND THE BARBERRY.-Plant students of the present day are familiar with the fact that the wheat rust, which does great damage to various grains, ordinarily begins its existence by producing cup-like fruiting parts, called aecedia, upon the leaves of the barberry. By means of spores borne in the aecidia it is able to spread rapidly to the grain later in the season. Long before the real nature of the wheat rust was discovered, observant farmers had noted the connection between the barbarry and rusted grain and as early as 1755 the then Province of Massachusetts passed "An Act to Prevent Damage to English Grain Arising from Barberry Bushes" which fixed a penalty of a two-shilling fine for every bush left standing after a certain date.

DESERT FLOWERS.-A desert is popularly regarded as a vast stretch of sandy sterile soil upon which no rain falls and in which, therefore, plants cannot grow. A more accurate definition of a desert would be, a region in which rain falls at such long intervals during part of the year that most plants cannot maintain a continuous vegetative existence. Certain plants like the cactus and agave or century plant, store up water during rains for use in drouths and are thus considered true Xerophytes, but many thin-leaved annuals have learned the habits of the dessert and thrive even in such inhospitable regions. At certain seasons of the year, especially immediately after the rainy season, plants spring up as if by magic and carpet the waste with flowers. In many places there are so many plants that they crowd one another. A count of

some regions has shown more than a hundred seedlings to the square inch. All these desert annuals are noticeable for the rapidity with which they develop. This is doubtless due to the fact that they are the descendants of a long line of plants which have time and again had it forced upon them that they must ripen their seeds before the precious moisture in the soil has disappeared. The seeds, too, seem to understand something of this, and in years when, for one cause or another, the rains are scanty, they do not grow at all but lie in the soil until another year of greater rainfall.

HYBRIDS AND VARIATIONS.-The prominence given these subjects at present makes the following list of titles of articles published in this magazine of interest. The number preceding the colon indicates the volume and the other the page. Hybridizing plants 6:111, violet hybrids 7:117, 12:11, wild hybrids 12:16, Hybrid lobelias 5:101, Asplenium ebenoides a hybrid 3:51, crossing orchid genera 5:37. The citrange, tangelo and plumcot, 5:119, variation in pecan, 2:57, variation in round leaves orchid 7:55, variation in plants 3:48, variation in common polypody 5:55, elementary species 8:97, making new species 10:17. Making a new variety 9:73. Possibilities of species-making 11:21, the interpretation of species 10:117. The American hop trees 11:43, more extinct species 3:52, 9:15. Species of varieties 4:74, origin of species by mutation 3:26, new species of plants 7:111. Cinamon fern fruiting in Autumn 2:44. Two forms of Virginia creeper 3:35. Formation of leaves in water 3:35. Varying size of Jackin-the-pulpit 9:73, Variation in toad flax 12:43. A large Arisaema 11:40. A large head of sunflower 11:88. Single volumes may be had for 50 cents each or for 40 cents when ordered with a year's subscription. The numbers are not sold singly. See advertising pages for complete sets and other numbers for different lists of titles.

THE TALIPOT PALM.-The talipot Corypha umbraculifera) is one of the most beautiful of palms with a tall mastlike trunk sometimes reaching a height of over a hundred feet. The great semi-circular, fan-like leaves are often as much as fifteen feet in radius giving a surface of about 350 square feet. The natives claim that the talipot can be used for one hundred and one purposes, the principal ones being as a rain coat and a sun shade. When a talipot palm reaches maturity its leaves decrease in size and finally a gigantic but nearly four feet in height is developed. This bud bursts open with a report and an immense inflorescence unfolds itself, appearing like a pyramid of cream-colored flowers rising to a height of 20 feet or more above the leafy crown. Innumerable nuts follow in due course and their appearance is a sign that the tree is nearing its end. It gradually begins to droop, the leaves wither and in less than a year it falls dead.-Plant World.

PLANT PHYLA.-Most people are familiar with the fact that the genus is not the highest group in classification. Beyond the genus is the family which includes many genera as the genus includes many species, and beyond the family is the order containing numerous families. Beyond the order is the sub-class, beyond this the class, and at the top of the list the Phylum. The phylum is the name given to the great groups of the plant world. By many these have been considered to be only four in number, namely, the Thallophyta or algae and fungi, the Bryophyta or mosses and liverworts, the Pteridophyta or ferns and fern allies and the Spermatophyta or flowering plants and conifers. In a recent publication entitled "A Synopsis of Plant Phyla" Prof. Charles E. Bessey has rearranged the phyla and their lesser divisions and now recognizes 12 Phyla, 34 classes, numerous orders and 636 families. The largest number of families is found in the Anthophyta or flowering plants which contain 280 and the next

largest is the Carpomyceteae of fungi with 145. Each family, order, sub-class, class and phylum are briefly described and show more clearly than usual the relationship of the plant world.

VITALITY OF PLANTS-The vitality of many plants seems largely a matter of moisture. A plant that cannot endure frost, and which, of course, would be killed by a heat many degrees below the boiling point of water, can cut off its seeds, each of which contains a plant like its parent, and after these are thoroughly dried, they may be subjected to heat above the boiling point or exposed to the greatest degree of cold that can be produced and escape unharmed. Give these seeds water, however, and they act exactly like the parent plant in their relations to heat and cold. The change in the seed, which enables it to endure extremes of heat and cold, while due largely to lack of water, is also due to other causes, for the protoplasm becomes harder, more granulose and denser, and changes somewhat in chemical composition.

THE FLOWERS OF THE HOP.-The hop (Humulus lupulus) is one of the plants known as dioecious, that is it produces pistillate (female) flowers on one plant, and staminate (male) flowers on another. Some recent observations by W. W. Stockberger have shown that the power to produce stamens is latent in the case of the female plant and flowers containing both pistils and stamens have been seen. A second observation bearing on the same phenomenon is that the underground runners which produce new plants may give rise to plants that are of the opposite sex from the plants which produce the runners. The question of the origin of dioecious flowers has yet much of mystery about it. In all probability the flowers of different sexes have been formed by the dropping out of one set of essential organs in each, but how this has been of ad