Some Crocuses Grown in a New York Room: GRACE L. MORRISON.. New Stations for European Plant Immigrants: HURON H. SMITH.... Proceedings of the Club: PERCY WILSON.......... Of Interest to Teachers: College Entrance Botany (Concluded). THE TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB OFFICERS FOR 1909 President HENRY H. RUSBY, M.D. Vice-Presidents EDWARD S. BURGESS, PH. D. JOHN HENDLEY BARNHART, A. M., M.D. TORREYA is furnished to subscribers in the United States and Canada for one dollar per annum; single copies, fifteen cents. To subscribers elsewhere, five shillings, or the equivalent thereof. Postal or express money orders and drafts or personal checks on New York City banks are accepted in payment, but the rules of the New York Clearing House compel the request that ten cents be added to the amount of any other local checks that may be sent. Subscriptions are received only for full volumes, beginning with the January issue. Reprints will be furnished at cost prices. Subscriptions and remittances should be sent to TREASURER, TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, 41 North Queen St., Lancaster, Pa., or College of Pharmacy, 115 West 68th St., New York City. Matter for publication should be addressed to JEAN BROADHURST Teachers College, Columbia University Late in the autumn of 1906 I noticed a strange cruciferous plant in a vacant lot near my home on the south side of the city of Chicago. It was growing by the sidewalk and had been subject to such severe treatment by children who use such spaces for playgrounds that I was not certain as to its specific identity, except that it was a Diplotaxis. It was not observed the next season, but it had survived and good specimens were obtained the past summer which showed it was D. muralis (L.) DC. I have not seen it elsewhere nor heard of its presence hereabouts from others. The range accorded it in Britton and Brown's Illustrated Flora (1897) is: "Waste places and ballast, Nova Scotia to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, chiefly about cities." This is substantially repeated in Britton's Manual (1901). The Gray's New Manual (1908) says: "About Atlantic ports and rarely inland," but without specifying how far from the coast. In Beal's Michigan Flora (1904) a single station is given, Grand Rapids, about the same distance from the coast as Chicago. Not having been mentioned in previous editions of Gray's Manual, it may be regarded as a comparatively recent introduction. As the migration of adventive plants is a matter of interest it seems well to record its appearance here. In 1890 I recorded the finding of another cruciferous plant, Nasturtium sylvestre R. B., since called Roripa sylvestris (L.) Bess, and which now has another name, Radicula sylvestris (L.) Druce, the common yellow cress. It was growing in the low ground adjacent to Salt Creek, a tributary of the Desplaines [No. 3, Vol. 9, of TORREYA, comprising pages 45-64, was issued March 26, 1909.] River, and along the highway that crosses the creek not far from Western Springs, a few miles west of Chicago. Since then it has spread throughout the region, being abundant by water courses, and especially so by the low margins of the Desplaines to Joliet and below. It should now be looked for southwest of here along the Illinois and perhaps the Mississippi, to which rivers the Desplaines is tributary. As it does not require wet grounds exclusively for prosperity, but may do well by moist roadsides or even on drier railway embankments, creeping up probably from near by ditches, it has still another means of distribution. This plant seems to have received its first notice in American botany in 1818, both by Nuttall in his Genera (2: 68), and by Barton in his Compendium Florae Philadelphicae (2: 55), both published that year. It was not mentioned by Barton in his earlier work, Prodromus of the Flora Philadelphica (1815), nor in Muhlenberg's Catalogue (1813), nor in Pursh's Flora (1814). Taking these dates as a starting point, it may be concluded that it was introduced into this country not far from that time, since otherwise it could hardly have escaped the eyes of those who then represented the most active botanical center in the land. Under the name of Sisymbrium vulgare Persoon (sylvestre L.), or the creeping water rocket, Nuttall states of it: "On the gravelly banks of the Delaware, near Kensington, Philadelphia. Introduced? Agrees exactly with Sir J. E. Smith's very accurate description, Flor. Brit., 2, p. 701. I have never before seen it in America." Barton, under Sisymbrium sylvestre L., says: "This plant covers large patches of ground on the low wet margins of the Delaware, just above Kensington; and it has every appearance of being a native there. It is not improbable, however, that it has been accidentally introduced in that neighborhood, where at least it is unequivocally naturalized. I have this summer found young leafing specimens four miles higher up the Delaware." From the tenor of this and from the question mark used by Nuttall it would seem that there was some doubt about its foreign origin. In Torrey and Gray's Flora of North America (1838-40), under Nasturtium sylvestre R. Br., Philadelphia is the only station mentioned, Nuttall being cited as authority. So also in Eaton and Wright's Botany (1840), and Wood's Class-Book (1854). In Gray's Manual (1856) it appears with an additional station, the entry being : "Wet meadows near Philadelphia and Newton, Mass., C. J. Sprague." In the fifth edition (1868) the range had been extended, as we read: "Massachusetts to Virginia, rare." This is repeated in the sixth edition (1889). In the Illustrated Flora (1897) the range is I still further extended. "Occasional from Massachusetts and Virginia to Ohio." In Britton's Manual (1901) the range is "Newf. to Mass., Va. and Mich." It had found a place in Beal's Michigan Flora (1904) but was not in the preceding catalogue of Beal and Wheeler (1892), the single station being Detroit. In Kellerman and Werner's Catalogue of Ohio Plants (1893) a single station is also mentioned, Painesville, near Lake Erie, or just east of Cleveland. One cannot from these data make out more than a general movement of the plant north and south, near the Atlantic coast, or westward toward the interior, either from the original station at Philadelphia or from other points of introduction along the seaboard. I find it mentioned for New York in a report of the State Cabinet of Natural History for 1865. The regent reporting on the topic refers to a previous list of Torrey, made in 1853, in which it does not appear, and says, that to his knowledge it had been reported from no other place than the one mentioned, Flushing, Long Island. The authority for the station was Mr. W. H. Leggett, who subsequently, as well as others, gave additional localities for New York and vicinity, as I find recorded in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club from time to time, up to 1889. One of these by Addison Brown mentions. it in 1879, among ballast plants, as if a new introduction by such means in that special case. Taking the rest of the state of New York, the plants of the central and western parts are quite well represented in four catalogues or floras issued between 1865 and 1896. The first of these is Paine's "Plants of Oneida County and Vicinity" (1865). That of David F. Day, "The Native and Naturalized Plants of the City of Buffalo and Vicinity" (1882), took in most of the territory west |