About twenty years ago I found some specimens of Lysenachia stricta on the banks of the Schuylkill, and not having before seen it in Pennsylvania, I took them up and plant-ed them in my garden, where they flourished and died without producing seed. I regret-ed the loss, but was surprised the following year to find several plants of the same kind, upon which, when examining them for seed, I found none, but observed a number of small bulbs formed in the axils of the leaves, which at the death of the plants fell to the ground and continued to grow through the winter, and rooting in the soil produced plants the next season. This manner of reproduction from the fallen bulbs has been continued every year from that time to the present - care having been annually taken to leave a a space about two feet square for the growth of the plants from the bulbs. It has been interesting to me to observe from time to time, the growth of the small bulbs lying on the ground, increasing from about a quarter of an inch to near or quite an inch in length during the winter season.

The soil in which they were planted I suppose to have been so unsuited to their nature as to prevent the production of seed, and they were obliged to call into operation the additional power of their nature given to prevent the extinction of the species.

But the reproduction from bulbs is not rare. During the past season a singular extension of power was shown; there were but few plants permitted to grow, and I examined them for bulbs at what I thought the usual season, and found none, but continuing to examine occasionally, I found a few bulbs on some of the plants, of smaller size and later in the season as I thought, although I may have been mistaken - but on two of the plants there were no bulbs, and on one of these, late in the season - when the others were entirely dead, and of this one the top was entirely dead to within two inches of the ground, I discovered three buds on the living part, perhaps half an inch apart, and on different sides of the stalk; these buds differed in form from a common bud, producing a branch, and also from the common bulb - being of a conical form, about half an inch in length, and about as large at the base as the stalk to which they were attached, and resembling the spur of the common dunghill cock; this singular growth, originating in the decaying stalk of an annual plant, I regarded as being unusual, and upon examining them a few days after, I found one of the buds lying upon the ground, apparently prepared to form a new plant, as the bulbs have hitherto done; and upon re-examination a few days after, although it still differed much in appearance from the bulbs around it, yet there remained no doubt that its office was the same, and if not destroyed, that it will become a perfect plant, showing the care of the Creator in providing the means to prevent any species from being lost.

A. W. Corson

Montgomery County, Pa., 11 mo. 97,18500.