A Queer Plant
An international group of botanists and biologists have begun to adopt the habit of putting forth a yearly problem, and seeking information on it from all who have made any little discovery. They have chosen for the first a flower which has inspired one of the greatest of poets and infuriated every other gardener. The lesser celandine has in an exaggerated degree the capacity for survival possessed by most buttercups, to whose family it belongs. I have before now filled a large wheelbarrow with the • bulbous roots growing on a small patch of garden ground, combed out the ground till not a trace of bulb was left and then awaited the spring. The celandines flowered hardly less profusely than of old in their former home. The plant has rare and curious devices for reproduction which are more or less independent of the standard way of nature. Though it is the most inveterate of garden weeds (always excepting gout- weed and bindweed) it is precious in the wild; and botanically one of the most interesting of plants even for the unscientific. Anyone who has observed curiosities in the plant is asked to send their words of wisdom to J. A. McRitchie, Shieldaig, Lancaster Avenue, Hitchin. The British Empire Naturalists' Association is co-operating in the inquiry.
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