MISCELLANEOUS SPECIFIC TYPES. — III. 107 



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among thickets of sweet fern and blueberry bushes, near 

 Middleton, Nova Scotia, 12 August, 1910. By its long calyx- 

 lobes and almost tubular corollas the plant fails to fall into 

 that aggregate of lesser gerardias called G, pauperpaida. I 

 say aggregate because this last is one thing as it occurs in New 

 England, and quite another as a denizen of western Ontario, 

 southern Michigan, and elsewhere about the Great Lakes. I 

 am unwilling to undertake the segregating of them, however, 

 until I have the better knowledge of them that comes of field 

 study of each in its own region. 



Gerardia mesochora. a foot high, more or less, simple 

 to above the middle, there parted into several slender branches, 

 these floriferous for more than half their length, the flowers 

 usually alternate : stem and branches not strongly angled and 

 their roughness obscure : leaves narrowly linear, seldom 

 notably acute, rather strongly muriculate-scabrous above : 

 flowers rich purple, large for the plant, the corolla commonly 

 more than an inch long, in full expansion as broad as long, 

 its lobes much broader than long and nearly truncate : anthers 

 not exserted nor very copiously hairy, but one side of the 

 filament excessivel}^ so and its hairs greatly elongated : fruit- 

 ing capsule depressed-globose, distending the calyx-tube, 

 hardly surpassing it, the calyx-teeth as short stout subulate 

 points arising above it. 



To this description answers a plant common in the Western 

 Midland and prairie regions of northern Indiana and Illinois, 

 Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and even eastern Nebraska. In 

 northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, I knew it familiarly 

 in earlier years, never doubting that it was, what every one 



has hitherto called it G, purpurea. 



The eastern plant, that is, of the Eastern and Middle States, 

 which most resembles this, and which may or may not fitly 

 bear the name invented by Linnaeus, has stems more angular 

 and scabrous, corollas not as large by one-third at least, its 

 flowers opposite on the branchlets, and a capsule which is 

 truly globose, not so greatly distending the calyx -tube, and 



