1905] Fernald, Lithological Varieties of Ribes 155 
was found venturing nowhere from the conditions which best suit it, 
though on cliffs at the summit of Tracadigash Mountain, a ragged 
trap ridge rising out of the calcareous tableland to a height of about 
2000 feet above the Baie des Chaleurs, the bushes were poorly 
developed and mostly sterile. 
In its leaf-outline, fruit and shriveled flowers, as well as in the 
character of its bark and prickles, this very pubescent shrub of 
southern Gaspé Peninsula is essentially identical with Rides oxya- 
canthoides, and the only character which seems to distinguish it 
clearly is the extreme development of pubescence on its foliage. 
This character, however, is so constant over a broad and clearly 
marked geological area that the plant is of special interest as an 
extreme which may be called 
RIBES OXYACANTHOIDES, L., var. calcicola. Resembling the spe- 
cies, but young branches, petioles, and lower leaf-surfaces perma- 
nently and densely white tomentose.— Calcareous soils of Bonaventure 
and Gaspé Counties, QuEBEC: Arbor-Vitae swamp, Carleton, July 
27, 1904. trap cliffs near summit of Tracadigash Mt., July 24, 
1904, Arbor-Vitae swamps at the mouth of the Bonaventure River, 
August 2, 1904 — type (J. F. Collins, M. L. Fernald & A. S. 
Pease); also noted in similar habitats at New Richmond, Grand 
River, and Percé, and upon the Little Cascapedia and Dartmouth 
Rivers. A flowering specimen from Mackinaw, Michigan (Loring) 
in the Gray Herbarium may belong here. 
A striking difference in the degree of pubescence, suggesting that 
shown in “des oxyacanthoides, is found also in Æ. Cynosbati. In New 
England and Eastern Canada, at any rate, the latter shrub, with per- 
manently soft-pubescent leaves and spiny berries, abounds in the 
interior strongly calcareous regions, where the smooth-leaved typical 
A. oxyacanthoides is rare, but from the non-calcareous regions near 
the coast and in central and eastern Maine and the Maritime Prov- 
inces it is quite absent. This typical form of Æ. Cymosbati, with 
soft-pubescent leaves extends through the St. Lawrence basin to the 
Great Lakes and beyond, and southward in the Eastern States. An 
extreme with leaves quite as glabrate as in true A. oxyacanthoides is 
found on the south shore of Lake Erie and on the slopes of some of 
the higher Alleghanies. Whether this smooth-leaved extreme is, 
like the typical smooth-leaved Æ. oxyacanthoides, confined primarily 
to the less calcareous soils, the data at hand do not clearly show; but 
the very glabrate phase of the plant seems worthy distinction as 
