242 Rhodora [ DECEMBER 
YELLOW-FRUITED ILEX VERTICILLATA. — In a recent excursion 
into the country to collect and compare the different forms of Carya 
and Quercus, to notice the effects of frost on the foliage, and inci- 
dentally to visit the new pumping station for the water supply of 
the city of New Bedford, located in Lakeville, fourteen miles from 
the city, I had the good fortune to find something novel and in- 
teresting. 
On leaving the electric car at Lakeville, I walked down a new 
road, recently opened through the woods, to the beautiful lake 
known as Little Quittacus, distant half a mile from the main road. 
After proceeding about half the way, I espied by the roadside A 
clump of bushes bearing a bright yellow berry, so unlike any other 
fruit as to arrest the attention at once. Although but a few scattered 
leaves remained upon the bushes, they were easily identified as a form 
of “lex verticillata, Gray, being, in fact, the forma chrysocarpa, 
Robinson, RHODORA, 2, 106, of which the only previously recorded 
station is Georgetown, Massachusetts. 
In the immediate vicinity there were many bushes bearing 
the normal scarlet berries, but a thorough search for other specimens 
of this rare variety was without avail. Passers by had evidently had 
their curiosity awakened, for a large branch of the golden berries 
was thrown carelessly by the roadside. This yellow-fruited form of 
our common black alder is, I find, in cultivation at the Arnold Arbor- 
etum, and there, as in its wild state, exhibits an earlier defoliation 
than neighboring specimens of the typical red-fruited variety. — 
E. WiLLiAMSs Hervey, New Bedford, Massachusetts. 
POLYGALA POLYGAMA, VAR. ABORTIVA MERELY AN AUTUMNAL 
STATE. — It is a well-known fact that Polygala polygama, Walt., 
bears normally two kinds of flowers, namely, the conspicuous ones 
with well-developed corolla, and the small pale or greenish cleis- 
togamous flowers. "The former are borne in terminal racemes, while 
the latter are usually confined to short basal shoots which often push 
themselves under the leaf-mould or surface soil In his detailed 
monograph of the genus Polygala, however, Professor Chodat 
described as var. abortiva, a supposed form of P. polygama in which 
short racemes of cleistogamous flowers arose also from the upper 
axils, even the terminal raceme sometimes bearing only reduced 
* Mém. Soc. Phys. Hist. Nat. Genèv, xxxi. pt. 2. no. 3, 280. 
