2 Rhodora [JANUARY 
In the indigenous shrubs of our northern forests and mountain- 
slopes the stems are decumbent or loosely straggling or reclining, 
often rooting freely where they touch the ground. The leafy shoots 
are produced chiefly from terminal buds while the numerous racemes 
appear below the leafy tips along the otherwise naked old wood. The 
blades of the mature leaves are 5 to 10 em. broad, the sides nearly 
parallel, the lobes-mostly broad-deltoid, the middle one usually broader 
than long. The pedicels are more or less covered with reddish or 
yellowish glands. The calyx is smoke-color or dull purplish, its 
segments very broadly cuneate, and the petals of similar outline. 
At the base of the calyx, between the stamens and the deeply-cleft 
style, there is a low and broad pentagonal disk. 
In all their essential characters the indigenous shrubs are uniform, 
but while the plants of one region have the leaves bright green and 
glabrous or glabrate upon both surfaces, those of other localities are 
whitened beneath with tomentum. Whether this production of 
pubescence is due to peculiarities of the soil such as have been 
pointed out in the case of Ribes oxyacanthoides, var. calcicola ! it is 
not now possible to state with certainty. It is, however, significant 
that the only phase of the plant known to the writer from the granitic 
mountains of Quebec and northern New England — Table-topped 
Mountain, Katahdin, the White Mountains, etc.— is the shrub with 
glabrous or glabrate leaves; plants from the humus of woodlands and 
swamps where the characteristic rock is more or less calcareous have 
the veins on the lower surfaces of the leaves somewhat ciliated with 
inconspicuous hairs — for example, specimens from low woods and 
Arbor-Vitae swamps in Rimouski County, Quebec, northern Maine 
and northern Vermont; and the shrubs which have unquestionably 
grown in strongly calcareous soils — specimens, for instance, from 
crevices of calcareous slates at Fort Kent and at Brownville, Maine — 
retain to maturity a soft coat of whitish tomentum. Most herbarium 
labels unfortunately give no information upon these points and further 
observations are necessary before we can state finally that the two 
extremes of our indigenous red current are due to local soil-conditions. 
Both in the field and in the herbarium the two plants are notably 
different in aspect, the one with quite green foliage, the other with the 
leaves strongly whitened beneath. 
! Fernald, RHODORA, vii. 155 (1905). 
