Vermischte neue Diagnosen. 3gJ 



breadth not exceeding that of the anthers, these oblong-linear, obscurely 

 mucronulate; fertile flowers with many pistils and usually 6 to 10 sta- 

 mens; mature carpels gradually narrowed below the middle but sessile, 

 thickest a little below the summit, therefore subclavate being only very 

 slightly flattened, sparsely pubescent both at the flowering stage and at 

 maturity. — Two sheets of specimens of this are before me, one belon- 

 ging to the U. S. National Herbarium, consisting of two staminate plants 

 and one fruiting one. These were collected in „Labrador <4 by W. E. 

 Stearns in 1875. The other sheet is no. 4,335 of the Canadian Geol. 

 Survey. This contains the upper portions of four plants, all fertile, the 

 flowers, though hermaphrodite, consisting mainly of pistils. These spe- 

 cimens are from thickets along the Upper West Branch of Hamilton 

 River, Labrador, by A. P. Low, 7 July, 1894. Both sheets had been 

 labelled T. dioicum, in either case the result of a mere glance at the 

 plants as small and very few-flowered, without the least attention to 

 the fact that the stamens are all clavate and erect; and, in the living 

 state, they must have been white, and therefore showy. — By the large 

 size and the small number of these white-stamened flowers, the plant 

 seems to recall more vividly than any other North American species 

 the T. aquilegi folium of Europe; and it is not at all impossible that 

 some such plant as this, from far northward, may have been Cornut's 

 original T, Canadense, and therefore the original T. Cornuti of Linnaeus. 

 918. Thalictrum tortuosum Greene, 1. c, p. 54. — Stout, rigid, evi- 

 dently tall, doubtless as yard high or near it, the stem angled and 

 striate, also minutely appressed-pubescent, the upper and floriferous 

 part more or less tortuous; basal leaves not seen, the largest cauline 

 one sessile, very large, 8 inches long and 10 in breadth, every petiolule 

 and ramification of it singularly tortuous; terminal leaflets an inch long, 

 nearly as broad, of round-ovate contour, cordate at base, at summit 

 variously but always broadly and not deeply lobed, the median lobe 

 often exceeding the others and itself 3-lobed, as often only broader and 

 entire, all lobes very obtuse; lateral leaflets broadly and very obliquely 

 oval when entire, but some larger and with a lobe or two, all leaflets 

 of firm texture, dark blue-green above and with scattered scaberulous 

 hairs, beneath glaucous and thinly tomentulose: flowers of fertile plants 

 in a rather naked but not large terminal panicle, the flowers 25 to 40, 

 the several stamens with long filaments capillary at base, distinctly cla- 

 vate above the middle, but nowhere of much more than half the thick- 

 ness of the anthers, these oblong to oblong-linear, mucronulate; carpels 

 numerous, nearly all maturing, small, sessile, scaberulous, their stigmas 

 closely circinate. — Thickets at Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Ma- 

 coun, 28 July, 1898. Only the middle and upper parts of one or two 

 plants were collected, all with mainly pistillate flowers, though with 

 several stamens in each flower; but the species is strongly marked by 

 its petioles and petiolules all of which are as contorted as those of a 

 Clematis, and the texture as well as the indument of the leaflet is of a 



