IRbobora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. 8. June, 1906. No. 90 



PARONYCHIA ARGYROCOMA AND ITS NEW ENG- 

 LAND REPRESENTATIVE. 



M. L. Ferxald. 



One of the plants most familiar to all botanists who explore the 

 White Mountains is the closely matted silvery-white perennial which 

 is called in our floras Paronijchia argijrocoma. In certain sections, 

 as in Crawford Notch and on some of the mountains of adjacent 

 Maine, the plant abounds on slides and even on exposed ledges and 

 steep embankments seemingly to the exclusion of other vegetation. 

 Notwithstanding its profusion in some districts, the plant seems 

 to have been missed by Menasseh Cutler, William Dandridge Peck, 

 Jacob Bigelow, and other New England botanists in their explora- 

 tions of the White Mountains ; and its first mention is apparently that 

 of William Oakes who wrote: 



"This beautiful plant was probably first collected in the Notch of 

 the White Mountains, by Drs. Chapman and Alexander, in the summer 

 of 1843. In the same year, I found it in the gravel of many of the 

 recent slides of the Notch, and Mr. Tuckerman has since found it in 

 unmoved soil on a flat rocky knoll, near the summit of Mount Craw- 

 ford, several miles distant from the Notch. It has not been found 

 elsewhere north of Virginia." ^ 



Gradually the known stations in New England for Paronychia 

 have increased, and we are now acquainted with it from the mountains 

 of Oxford County, Maine, west through the Crawford Notch region 

 to Mount Clinton, and south to IVIount Chocorua. In June, 1884, a 

 singularly isolated station for the plant was found by Dr. Castelhun 



1 Oakes in Hovey's Mag. xiii. 217 (1847). 



