f 



L 



i 



\ SOME ALLIES OF HIBISCUS MOSCHEUTOS. 65 



i- 



r 



white southern one is //. Moschetilos, and it is improbable that 

 ^ any man, either botanist or botanophile, knowing both, will 



doubt their distinctness. Indeed, one of the most capable of 

 northern botanists, though of an earlier generation, namely 

 Bigelow, knew nothing of any other native hibiscus in Mass- 

 achusetts than //. paluslris, A living botanist of the North, 

 and one well travelled, once asked me what this great cream- 

 colored narrow-leaved plant of these southern marshes could 

 be ; so confident had he been that the maple-leaved red- 

 flowered one of the North had been authoritatively determined 

 by great men to be what they had called it ; and he seemed to 

 think that our plant of these regions must be nondescript. 



I distinguish readily between //. palusiris of brackish 

 marshes northeast vA*ard, and an ally which it has on swamps 

 bordering the Great Lakes far inland. But the center of dis- 

 tribution for these fine malvaceous plants seems to be much 

 further southward ; and a few species of them not heretofore 

 defined are now described. 



*■. 



Hibiscus opulifolius. Stamens, petioles and peduncles 

 pale, but with bloom rather than with pubescence, the sub- 

 stellate hairs being sparse : leaves 4 or 5 inches wide and 

 scarcely longer, angulate lobed as in some maples and quite as 

 in Viburnum Opuhis, the lateral lobes at about midway of the 

 blades and not prominent, the whole margin very regularly 

 crenate-subserrate, upper face green, glabrous and remarkably 



whitish-veiny, lower face whitened, but not alone with pubes- 



cence, this being rather sparse : flowers solitary in the axils, 

 on peduncles 3 inches long and twice the length of the petioles, 

 from which they are perfectly distinct : bracts of the involucres 

 long and triangular-subulate, of more than two-thirds the 

 length of the calyx, this cleft to the middle, the lobes short- 

 oval, cuspidate : flowers tinged with rose, not large, the petals 

 about 3 inches long. 



Ontario, on Point Pelee, I,ake Erie, 23 July, 1892, collected 

 by Mr. John Macoun. Very well marked by its broad maple- 

 like foliage dark-green above and whitish veiny, as well as by 



