"A radio announcement was made Friday night - by whose authority remains
a mystery - that residents could help themselves to a group of young trees
along the Beltline next to the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. 
 "Construction of two additional lanes of Beitline roadway got started in
the area Thursday. The trees are in the path of the new road and will be
bulldozed into trash this week. 
 "An Arboretum official told The Wisconsin State Journal that they were at
a loss to know who said "help yourselves." 
 "University police and Arboretum workers said they had to patrol the Arboretum
boundary to prevent trees from being dug. The boundary fence had been removed
for the roadwork. 
 "But the people got some of those trees, too," the official said. 
 "There must have been 400 cars out there Sunday, he said. 
 "The people even were taking up a lot of dirt. Most of the trees they took
were young maples and pines. The maples don't have adequate roots and probable
won't survive," he said. "And the same is probably true of the pines", he
added. 
 "State police set up "No Parking" signs, which were ignored. But there were
no reports of any arrests. Dane county police said they had not been notified
of the incident. 
 "Allowing trees to be taken from state property is against the law and this
instance sets a bad percedent," the official said." 
Interesting Plants of the Arboretum. 6. Indian Paintbrush. 
 The Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea) is one of the most colorful
of the early summer plants of moist sand prairies. It has been established
on the Grady Prairie and is noW present in a colony of more than 10,000 plants.
The plant is an annual, about 12 to 15 inches tall, with lobed leaves. The
flowers in a terminal spike are small and inconspicuous, but are surrounded
by brilliantly colored leafy bracts. These were bright scarlet when the colony
was first developed. but a gradually increasing proportion of forms with
clear yellow bracts has become evident in recent years, and occasional specimens
have bracts of an intermediate orange color. 
 The plant is a partial root-parasite, gaining part of its food from the
roots of neighboring host plants which are probably grasses or sedges. Because
of this it does not lend itself to horticultural uses, and this is a great
pity, since our gardens are almost totally lacking in flowers with such an
intense shade of red. 
 In Wiscansia ihe indian Paintbrush is found in moist, peaty low prairies
and also among the sand plants at several places on the Lake Michigan shore,
especially in Kenosha and Door Counties. 
----J. T. Curtis. 
A New Arboretum Publication Series 
 A paper entitled "Supplement to Fungi of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum"
is No. 1 in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum Occasional Paper Series.
This series is designed to include papers which may appear at irregular intervals,
are confined to material of local or restricted interest, and which may not
be suitable for standard periodicals. "Fungi of the University of Wisconsin
Arboretum" appeared in Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci Arts & Letters 39: 47-82.
1949. The supplement is a 27-page paper reproduced from typescript by the
University Duplicating Department, and contains numerous additional records
of fungi collected within the Arboretum, many of the collections having been
made during the September 1953 Foray of the Mycological Society of America,
held at Madison in conjunction with the AIBS meetings at that time. This
paper, and others which may appear inthe series, will ultimately be distributed
to institutions on our mailing list.