92 Rhodora [May 



of M. nuda: " ^. creeping shoots assurgtiiit at tlie extremity, hearing 

 a terminal raceme";^ and subsequent authors have very generally con- 

 sidered the plant a phase of M. nuda, while both Doctors Rydberg 

 and Rosendahl in their monographs reduce it to unquestioned synon- 

 ymy as identical with that well-known northern species. 



Michaux's specimen at the Museum d' Histoire Xaturelle in Paris, 

 however, shows that, while the plant is an undoubted Mitella, it is far 

 from identical with M . nuda. The sheet, bearing besides analytical 

 notes the inscription in Michaux's hand "Mitella pro.sirata. Lac 

 Champlain," shows a plant as coarse as M. diphi/lla, with a thickish 

 subterranean creeping rhizome, but no slender stolons as in M. nuda; 

 the leaves strongly angulate-lobed as in M. diphylla; and the ascending 

 flowering-stem 3.6 dm. high (taller than most M. diphi/lla) and bear- 

 ing 4 very remote alternate leaves, the two lower strongly angled and 

 long-petioled, 'the two upper scarcely angled and subsessile. The 

 raceme is very long-peduncled (() cm. long), though a remote solitary 

 flower is borne from the axil of the upjiermost leaf. In general the 

 inflorescence suggests that of M. diphylla, but the |)edicels, 3-() mm. 

 long, are much longer than in that species, in which they arc normally 

 from 1.5 to 2.5 mm. long. In these rather long pedicels alone does the 

 Michaux specimen of M . prostrata approach the mor(> slender round- 

 leaved scapose M. nuda to which it has too long been referred; but 

 in the long pedicels as well as in its remote alternate leaves it strongly 

 suggests Nuttall's M. caulescent of the Northwest. That clearly- 

 marked species, however, has the pedicels strongly divergent while 

 those of M. pro.s'trata are as strongly ascending. 



This detailed account of Michaux's original specimen of Mitella 

 prostrata is here included not because, as in the case of the flrst two 

 ])lants discu.ssed in these notes, it is an apparent hybrid, but bec-ause 

 it is evidently a lost species. Whether it is a j^lant genetically 

 distinct from both the well-known eastern species it is now impossible 

 to say; but the definition of the type-region, "ad fines meridionales 

 Canadae," supplemented by Michaux's manuscript record "Lac 

 Champlain," is sufficiently clear; and the Champlain Valley is being 

 explored by botanists too keen and discriminating to overlook Mitella 

 prostrata if, as in ]\Iichaux's day, it still grows near the border of Ver- 

 mont. 



Gray HEiinARiuM. 



1 T. & G.. Fl. i. 586 (1840). 



