228 ■ •> Rhodora ' ' [December 



in the Alpine Garden of Mt. Washington, was also recognized by 

 A. P. de CandoUe as distinct from Pursh's S. macrophylla. In the 

 Prodromus, in 1836, de Candolle described the White Mountain plant 

 as 8. leiocarpa} His material, sent by "Dr. Hoot" in 1830 from the; 

 White Mountains, is, as shown in the Prodromus Herbarium, the; 

 characteristic j)]aiit of the Alpine (larden. 



In interpreting the earlier SoUdafjo macrophylla of Pursh ^ we are 

 naturally at a disadvantage from the meagre description and from 

 the fact that the type is apparently not extant.^' Pursh's description 

 was taken from ''Herb. Banks. m.v,v." and the plant, "about three 

 feet high" with "calycibus oblongis" came from "Canada." The 

 "Canada" of Banks was, of course, the low forested eastern region 

 where the tall plant with oblong heads and linear-attenuate bracts 

 abounds and where the other is unknown; and it is very safe to assume 

 that this common plant was rightly identified by Dr. Gray ^ as S. 

 inacrophylla. 



The two plants here discussed are ordinarily well distinguished, 

 but since the only characters by which they seem to differ are those 

 of size of head and breadth of bracts, both features which show a 

 wide range of variation and a strong tendency to intergradation, it is 

 probable that they are best treated as extreme phases of one plant: 

 the woodland S. macrophylla of eastern Canada and the uplan(i regions 

 of New England and New York with oblong heads and linear-attenuate 

 thin mostly scarious bracts; and an extreme variation of it growing 

 in more alpine or subarctic regions and chnracterized by broader 

 subglobose or oblong-ovoid heads and lanceolate to narrowly deltoid 

 greener bracts. This plant of the Labrador coast and of our alpine 

 regions should be called 



SoLiDAGO MACROPHYLLA Pursh, var. thyisoidea (E. Meyer) n. comb. 

 5. thyrsoUea E. Meyer, PI. I.ab. G3 (1830). .S. leiocarpa DC. Prodr. 

 V. 339 (1830). — Labrador, at various coastal stations: Quebec, 

 alpine and subalpine regions of Mt. Albert and of Table-topped 

 Mountain: New Hampshire, Alpine Garden, Mt. Washington. 



Gray Herbarium. 



1 DC. Prodr. v. 339 (1836). - ■ 



2 Pursh, Fl. 542 (1814). 



«See Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 187 (1882). 

 *Gray, 1. c. 



