200 Rhodora [Jurv 
and with larger leaves than in specimens of less favored soils, they 
cannot be otherwise separated from the very pubescent plant left by 
him to represent in part true S. Parvu/a. 
That the very pubescent S. parvula of Michaux and the smooth- 
ish plant associated with it are marked extremes there can be no 
doubt, but, differing only in the degree of pubescence and in an 
inconstant tendency in the leaves, they seem better treated as 
varieties than as distinct species. The smoothish plant, which has 
been carefully identified with Nuttall's type kindly placed at the 
writer's service by Mr. Stewardson Brown of the Philadelphia 
Academy of Sciences, should take as its varietal designation the 
name given it by Nuttall as a species. 
In the Botanical Club Check List Dr. Britton pisa to specific 
rank Dr. Gray's Scutellaria parvuía, var. mollis, the overgrown 
pubescent plant of the Mississippi valley, and he gave it the speci- 
fic name S. campestris. That this large form has nothing but its 
size to distinguish it from the ordinary pubescent plant we have 
already stated, and this view is supported by Dr. Britton’s treatment 
of the two forms in the Illustrated Flora. There S. parvula is 
described as “glabrous, or slightly pubescent,” and S. campestris 
“densely pubescent all over.” Thus it seems that the name 5S. 
campestris, Britton, was intended to cover not merely the large S. 
parvula, var. mollis, Gray, but all the forms which are “densely 
pubescent all over." If, however, we are to treat the two forms as 
specifically distinct, we must take for the smooth plant of the 
Illustrated Flora (S. parvula, Britton) its Nuttallian name sS. 
ambigua; and to the pubescent plant, recently described by Dr. 
Britton as a new species, we must apply Michaux's name S. parvula, 
given to the plant which is “dense pubescens,” or as expressed by 
Hooker “everywhere covered with short glandular pubescence.” 
The two forms, which in their extremes may usually be recog- 
nized, are distinguished as follows: 
S. PARVULA, Michx. Plant strongly stoloniferous and producing 
moniliform tubers: stems simple or branched, mostly clustered, 0.8 
to 3 dm. high, pubescent with spreading often viscid hairs: leaves 
ovate or ovate-oblong, more or less pubescent, entire or sparingly 
toothed, at most 1.2 cm. broad, all but the lowest sessile: flowers 
axillary, the pedicels about equalling the hairy calyx: corolla 
1 Mem. Torr. Club, v. 283. 
