period it has been more abundant than before, whence it is fair to conclude
that some unpropitious circumstance in those seasons had retarded
its growth, though the root had remained uninjured or undiminished.
There is a white variety described by Walter. Our plant
is always straw-yellow, but the colour of the petals does not seem to
be constant in this plant. In Europe the colour is pale rose-red or
white, and in the Chinese paintings of the plant, which represent it
very perfectly, they are uniformly rose-red, with darker stripes of this
hue, which, converging towards the apices of the petals, renders them
of a deep red. Writers have described the receptacle of the foreign
plant as separating spontaneously from its peduncle and floating down
the river in which the plant may grow, the seeds vegetating in the pericarp,
finally bursting from their bed, and dropping into the mud, take
root and produce new plants. I have had an opportunity of witnessing
this fact in our plant, since it grows in stagnant ditches in the
Neck and has never appeared along the shores of the Delaware,
though within one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards of its banks.
I have, however, remarked, that the pericarp drops in the autumn
from the peduncle, and that the fruit may be said to be viviparous,
germinating the same season. It is ripened like the seeds of Orontium
aquaticum, Symplocarpus, different species of Arum, and other
aquatic plants. Efforts at cultivating this plant, and multiplying its
sites of growth have been unsuccessfully made in the neighbourhood
of this city. It appears to thrive only in the spot where nature has
planted it, and where it certainly appears to be indigenous. The
failures have in all probability been owing to a want of that peculiar
kind of indigo-coloured, tenacious, clayey mud, which fills the bottoms
of the pools in which it so luxuriantly thrives, and in which its roots
are buried to the depth of several feet.
Fig. 1. Represents a flower-bud, culled about a week before maturity.
2. The expanded flower, one day old, one or two of the front
petals turned aside to give a full view of the stamens and
germ.
3. An outline leaf, nearly of its smallest size. They are generally
twice as large as this, and often two feet in diameter.
4. A pericarp, the commonest size, they are often twice as large.
5. A seed or root.
6. A stamen, taken from the flower after it has continued a day
or two expanded.
pit