IRbobora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. 6 October, 1904 No. 70 



THE AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVES OF PYROLA 

 ROTUNDIFOLIA. 



M. L. Eernald. 



It has long seemed strange that the handsome plants passing as 

 Fyrola rotundifolia should occupy in Europe and America geographic 

 areas of such different character. The European plant is a species 

 of northern and mountainous districts, extending from latitude 73° in 

 Greenland/ latitude 67° in Lapland,^ and Iceland and the Earoe 

 Islands across much of Europe and western Asia to latitude 45°, and 

 very rarely southward in the Pyrenees, Apennines, and other moun- 

 tains. 3 An extreme Arctic representative of the plant, P. i^randijfora 

 Radius {P. groenlandtca and J\ piimi/a, Hornem., P. rot undif alia, 

 \^x. piimila, Hornem.) occurs in Greenland and the Arctic regions 

 of America, extending south in Labrador to Hopedale (latitude 55° 

 40'). In Europe the range of P. rotundifolia closely approximates 

 that of P. minor; and a third species, P. tnedia, Swartz, unites to 

 such an extent the characters of P. rohmdifoUa and P. minor that 

 European botanists often find difficulty in distinguishing it.* 



The large white-flowered plant which in America has long passed 

 as true Pyrola rotundifolia occurs in open dry or sandy woods, rarely 

 in swamps, from the Bale des Chaleurs, Quebec (latitude 48° 10') 

 west to South Dakota and south beyond latitude 35° into Georgia. 

 Its range in America is thus much more southern than that of P. 



1 Lange, Consp. Fl. Groen. 815 (18S0). 



2N. J. Andersson, PI. Vase. Qiiickjock Lap. Lulensis, 27 (1S45). 

 ^ See Nyman, Consp. Fl. Eur. 492 (1879). 



*"P. MEDIA, Swartz. . . . Perhaps a mere variety of P. fninor, and sometimes 

 passing almost into P. rotuitdifolia.''''— Kentham, Brit. Fl., ed. 4, 300 (1878). 



