1906] Fernald,— Alpine Variety of Solidago macrophylla 227 



AN ALPINE VARIETY OF SOLIDAGO MACROPHYLLA. 



M. L. Fernald. 



Botanists who have collected in the Alpine Garden of Mt. Wash- 

 ington are familiar with a dwarfed extreme of Solidago macrophylla 

 which, in some characters other than its low stature, differs from the 

 common tall plant of the wooded slopes of the IVhite Mountain region. 

 The plant of the woods, which is widely distributed through the coni- 

 ferous forests from Newfoundland and southern Labrador to Lake 

 Superior, south to central Maine and New Hampshire, Mt. Mon- 

 adnock, Mt. Greylock, and the Catskills, has the involucre of the 

 oblong-cylindric heads composed of linear-attenuate thin, often 

 scarious, bracts. In the plant of the Alpine Garden, on the other 

 hand, the involucre of the much fuller and broader subglobose heads 

 is composed of shorter narrowly deltoid to lanceolate firmer, often 

 subherbaceous, bracts. 



As it occurs on Mt. Washington, the alpine plant with broader 

 head.s and broader firmer bracts is generally considered an extreme 

 of the woodland S. macrophylla. Further north, however, where the 

 latter species with narrow bracts and oblong heads is the commonest 

 goldenrod at low altitudes, it gives way, in the alpine and exposed 

 situations, to the larger-headed plant with broader bracts, so generally 

 as to indicate that this plant is worthy more definite recognition than 

 is ordinarily given it. Thus, in the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec the 

 typical 5. macrophylla of Pursh, the plant with oblong heads and 

 linear-attenuate bracts, is everywhere abundant in woods and clearings 

 from sea-level to the wooded mountain-slopes. In the alpine and 

 subalpine regions, however, of the great tablelands of Mt. Albert and 

 of Table-topped Mountain, the common representative of S. macrcy- 

 phylla is the plant with broad subglobose heads (in extreme specimens 

 2 cm. in diameter), which abounds over fully a hundred square miles 

 of alpine meadows and slopes. 



Still further north, on the Labrador coast, likewise, the plant of 

 exposed situations is like the large-headed plant of the Alpine Garden. 

 In fact, all the material known to the writer from north of the Straits 

 of Belle Isle is of this plant; and there is no question that it is 8. 

 thyrsoidea which was described in 1830 by Ernst Meyer from Okkak 

 (latitude 57° 30') on the Labrador Coast. The same plant, as found 



