1901] Fernald, — The True Lycopodium complanatum 279 
whose lowermost scales were often remote, grading imperceptibly 
into the scales of the peduncle. r 
Later, in September, the writer found in spruce woods at Island 
Falls' (about ninety miles south of Fort Kent) a much larger develop- 
ment of the loosely branching plant. Here, however, the very long 
and loose branches were dark green and not glaucous; but, other- 
wise, in its broad, elongated, slightly forking branches and solitary 
or paired strobiles the Island Falls plant was undoubtedly to be 
identified with the more glaucous material from Fort Kent. 
A comparison of the Maine specimens shows this plant to be of 
broad range in North America — from Newfoundland and Labrador 
to Alaska, south to the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains. 
This, as shown by the specimens then cited, is the plant described, 
without name, in rgoo by Lloyd and Underwood as a peculiar north- 
western form of £L. complanatum; while as the typical form of the 
species was cited the common eastern plant with “regular compact 
fan-like habit." They found, * however, at present only insufficient 
reasons for giving distinct specific rank to these plants," and, further- 
more, that “ Z. complanatum, as it grows in Scandinavia, seems to 
parallel the northwestern condition of the American plant." 
As represented in the Gray Herbarium the Scandinavian material 
of Lycopodium complanatum is not alone in resembling the “ north- 
western condition of the American plant." In fact, all the European 
and most of the Asiatic specimens examined are inseparable from 
the loosely branched plant found in northern Maine and described 
by Lloyd and Underwood from the northwest. ‘This is the plant 
generally accepted by European authors as Lycopodium complanatum 
and it is well illustrated in Flora Danica, xv. t. 2671, and Journal of 
Botany, xx. t. 233. In fact, none of the Old World material examined 
(with the possible exception of a doubtful plant from Sachalin) 
shows the “compact fan-like habit ” of the common plant of eastern 
America. In the European material the number of strobiles varies 
from 1 to s, but peduncles bearing 1 or 2 occur most frequently. 
Of 208 peduncles examined 92 have rz strobile, 88 have 2, 22 have 
3, 5 have 4, and 1 has 5, with an average of 1.7 strobiles for each 
peduncle. : 
The Lycopodium complanatum of Linnaeus was a complex. The 
descriptive phrase in the Species Plantarum * spicis geminis peduncu- 
latis” and the first cited references, to Flora Lapponica and Flora 
Suecica, show very definitely that he had in mind the common plant 
