Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 7 October, 1905 No. 82 
ECLIPTA ALBA IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
S. N. F. SANFORD. 
THE appearance of any plantin a new locality is always interesting, 
whether the extension of its range has been gradual, or is the result 
of accident, the plant becoming established in the latter case by quick 
adaptation to its new surroundings. 
The discovery of Ec/f/a alba Hassk. at Fall River, Massachusetts, 
Sept. 5, 1905, led to the usual inquiry regarding the present knowl- 
edge of the plant in the North, for the manuals give the range as 
Southern New York, New Jersey, and Southward to Florida. A 
specimen collected on the South Boston flats by C. E. Perkins, in 
1879, is in the herbarium of the New England Botanical Club, and 
this appears to be the basis of the only other New England record. 
The South Boston station is now probably destroyed. 
The Fall River specimens are not mere waifs struggling to exist, 
for the writer counted some fifty vigorous, nearly full-sized plants 
growing on both sides of a stream, some of them bearing five or more 
stout branches, each with one to several flowers. The limited area in 
which the plants were found, however, points to a very local origin, 
and the proximity to the terminus of a railroad over which is trans- 
ported much cotton from the South, indicates at once their probable 
source. 
Aside from the discovery of Ec/lipta alba so far out of its natural 
range, an interesting study of habitat is involved. The land is low, 
wet, waste ground through which runs a small stream of fresh water. 
Into this stream is a more or less constant flow of hot water from 
a neighboring cotton mill, resulting in a warm, moist atmosphere all 
