As might be expected from his articles in this issue, salamanders are the chief interest in the life of Ranger- Naturalist James Kezer. A good observer clad in hip-boots, he spent his free time last summer in the wet, boggy spaces of the park and Oregon Caves National Monument. The result was the addition of several aquatics to the flora of the regions. His first find was a quillwort, Isoetes sp., in Lower Biglow Lake above Oregon Caves. Later he found his "lost" pond near Arant Point floored with it.

Tho it is not indicated upon park maps, this small pond was not unnoticed in the past. There is a current story that it was planted with fingerlings in the early thirties. Their introduction was the signal for numbers of pelicans to visit the shallow waters until the last fish was consumed. Former park ranger Jack Frost said that he had heard this story in 1936. He made two trips to the pond in 1937, never to see waterfowl of any kind on or near the water.

Permanent ponds inside the park boundaries are rare. Because of its history, the park concluded that this pond should bear an official name. For the purpose, I weighed the possibilities of Isoetes, what with its Greek origin, euphony, and dieresis, but settled instead on simple "Quillwort Pond" to propose through channels to the Board on Geographic Names.

The plant is of interest. Its nearest relatives are the club mosses and scouring rushes (equisetums or horsetails). They are aquatic or marshloving, and have been traced back in geological time to the Miocene. They are characterized by an extremely short, corm-like stem from which grow 10 to 100 quill-shaped leaves. The bases of the leaves are spoon-shaped, in which grow the fruiting bodies or sporangia that are of two sizes and kinds. Larger spherical macrospores occur in the outer leaves while numerous, triangular microspores grow in the inner leaves. Size and sculpturing of the spores form the important differences between species.

The park specimens were examined by Dr. L. R. Detling of the University of Oregon who identified them as I. braunii Durieu. He bases his conclusion on the presence of very long papillae, almost spines, on the megaspore coat. Dr. LeRoy Abrams of Stanford gives the range of this species as far northern, coming southward only into Washington and Idaho. Further investigation will be reported in a future issue.