4 LEAFLETS. 
Similarly, a fine sheet of specimens of V. inornata from Iowa, 
stout, low, and scaberulous, and with the thick obtuse sepals of 
that species, show a distinct though not very long but stout 
curved spur, this as completely rounded at its terminus as the 
organ is in other northern forms here cited. 
In the Wrong Genus. 
While examining some Potentilla bundles lately in the U. S. 
Herb., I came incidentally to a sheet of specimens labelled P. 
gracilipes, Piper, n. sp., the first glance at which suggested a 
Steversia, and an examination revealed the characters of that 
genus. It will therefore be called 
SIEVERSIA GRACILIPES: FP. gracilipes, Piper, Bull. Torr. 
Club xxvii. 392. The species has for its nearest affinity S. seri- 
cea, Greene, Pitt. iv. 50. 
Further Segregates from Aster. 
Somewhat late in summer seven years ago, following an old 
wood road up a mountain side in northern Pennsylvania, I paused 
for a moment in admiration of some nodding corymbs that in 
partial shade were peering a little above the rest of the woodland 
herbage and seemed as if they must be those of some asteraceous 
plant; though up to that time I had not seen, or even heard of 
any asteraceous plant with nodding heads. But on a near ap- 
proach to the plants I discovered by the unmistakable cut of the 
foliage that this was what I had known well enough in herba- 
rium specimens for perhaps forty years, what is called Aster 
acuminatus. Somewhat later that season I transferred roots of 
the plant to my garden near Washington, discovering what also 
had not, and has not until now been mentioned, that the species 
propagates by tubersrather by stolons. Attheend of each long 
slender subterraneous branch a small organ is formed which, 
exactly resembles a small potato, and from each of these springs 
a plant for the next year. 
Having studied this type in the living state for another season, 
I in 1897 labelled all my herbarium sheets of this species 
OcLEMENA ACUMINATA, having first noted that neither the 
achenes nor the pappus are those of thegenus Aster, the former 
