Volume 25 – Issue 4 (Dec 1960)

Mr. Gail Shrader has found a colony of Vitis rotundifolia Michx, near Mullens, Wyoming County, West Virginia. This species was reported by Millspaugh (Flora of West Virginia, p. 343) for Fayette, Randolph and Summers Co., in 1892, but these records are without recent confirmation, and no herbarium material exists. There are fourteen plants, one 3 inches in diameter and 12 feet tall, at the station. Herbarium sheets and fruits are deposited in Concord College Herbarium and West Virginia University Herbarium.

In the article on Alnus crispa published in CASTANEA for June, 1960, the occurrence of this plant in Pennsylvania was overlooked. It has been collected at two localities, one in Tioga County, near the northern border (Owassee, lat 41°43′, long. 77°27½’, Wahl No. 15870, June 21, 1955) and the other in Bedford County (Martin Hill Fire Tower, lat. 39°50′, long. 78°32½’, Berkheimer No. 9883, July 15, 1948), this near the southern border only 50 miles northeast of West Virginia. The disjunction of this taxon is thus not nearly so extreme as implied in the article. Plant geographers working on plants the distribution of which may cross Pennsylvania would do well to consult the Porter herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the extensive! more recent collections at the University of Pennsylvania, in which latter the above cited specimens are filed.

About a year ago I was discussing ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) with a well known botanist. He stated he only knew this, plant in its three-leaf form as most commonly described by the different text books. It is my opinion most botanists who have not had a wide field experience would not recognize the plant except in this one form. The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the different forms, uses, and value of this plant. I am working from three text books. One of these says “The compound leaves are borne three in a circle”. The other two say essentially the same. Two of them state there are five leaflets to the leaf while the other states there may be three to seven.

In the note by Clyde F. Reed on page 61 the opening line was unfortunately dropped. It should read as follows: “Brooks and Margolin (The Pteridophytes of West Virginia, 1938,”-EDITOR.

A brand new text which brings together sufficient scattered information to outline a new field of Botany, is this volume by Prof. Sinnott, a man with an excellent and lengthy background in the field. This book covers many of the “interfield” phases of Botany, citing many examples and references dealing with areas not normally encompassed by “standard” fields.

Throughout the years, clergymen—“Men of the cloth”—have contributed much to the sum total of botanical knowledge. In the 16th century, Otto Brunfels, Jerome Bock, and Wiliam Turner, were eminent pioneers in plant taxonomy. In the 17th century, the puritan divine, John Ray, did such significant work that he has been considered “the greatest European botanist of the 17th century.” In the 18th century Stephen Hales performed his brilliant, revealing experiments in plant physiology, and in the 19th century, Gregor Mendel, in his studies of inheritance, laid the foundations of modern genetics. All of these servants of the church are better known as botanists than they are as clergymen. There were many others employed as ministers who made plant study a hobby and became widely known through their accomplishments in the field of botany. Among these was the Rev. Fred WV. Gray, so well and favorably known among his many friends as “Parson” Gray.

The first plants I ever saw of Pluchea camphorata were growing in a small marshy bottom beside a brook on the farm of my father-in- law, in Martin County, Kentucky. There were only a dozen or so of the plants and my father-in-law detested them and called them “polecat weed,” because of the rank, unpleasant odor which the leaves give out when crushed. He also said if his cows should eat them, it would make the milk most unpleasant to the taste. I became much interested in studying these plants, not only because of their spicy odor, but because of their general scarcity throughout Eastern Kentucky. I next found two or three plants growing in a moist place on the bank of Hobbs Creek, in Martin County, and these were in bloom, and I had a chance to study them. They bear numerous heads of flowers, each head about one-half an inch high. The color is a dull pinkish-white, and the flowers are tubular, the involucres bell-shaped, with ovate-lanceolate bracts, which are pubescent and purplish in color. The corollas are mostly five-cleft.

Both great genera of the Lycopodiales are familiar to us here in the eastern States, but neither is a prominent element of our flora. Selaginella especially is anything but conspicuous, though not at all rare.

Although western Pennsylvania is relatively well known botanically, some interesting plants have been discovered here recently.

John Ruskin’s vigorous protest against paying two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face might almost have damned James M. Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold” to eternal fame, and contrasts sharply with the serenity of an observation from the “Stones of Venice,” viz., “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.” But it was among the farming people of the general Slabtown area in South Carolina that we found a distinction between the blue-leaf and the yellow-leaf white oaks, nor will we deny the source of our information being what Ruskin would expect. However, mixed with it was a shrewd distinction between the lasting qualities of the two woods. This difference was mentioned in Meridian States Research, VI:4, along with the reddish and yellowish varieties of red maples. Some noteworthy botanical variations in both Carolinas and in Georgia are here recorded, all from the Appalachian Piedmont country.