In your Monthly I have frequently read notices of peculiar growths and malformations, which, besides a passing interest, have a botanical value, and hence worthy of record.

I have observed a blossom of a seedling Begonia which had the form and position of the male flower, but, instead of stamens, had a circle of seven pistils around a cluster of granular bodies, which bodies, on close examination, proved to be well-formed ovules, thus presenting an extruded ovary. There was no indication of a pod behind the petals.

A rarer phenomenon, however, is a root in my possession, half an inch thick, which grew in the form of a circle four inches in diameter, at the base of the stalk of a rank weed. There is no indication of the direction of growth or flow of nutrition. New Castle, Pa.