6 Rhodora [JANUARY 
Of the plants enumerated by Wolf and by Rydberg under their 
second main groups, Potentilla Egedii Wormsk. (P. Anserina, var. 
Egedii T. & G., Argentina Egedii Rydb.) seems to stand off from the 
others by the pinnate (scarcely interruptedly pinnate) leaves, and the 
few comparatively broad leaflets which are glabrous or glabrate be- 
neath. The writer has been unable to see good achenes of this plant, 
but they are said by Rydberg to be “2.5 mm. long, plump, not grooved.” 
P. Egedii is an arctic plant seemingly distinct from P. Anserina and 
extending down our coast to northern Labrador. 
The other species maintained by Rydberg are open to greater 
doubt. In the first place, the chief distinction of his species nos. 3 and 
4 as contrasted with the remainder is, that in the first two species the 
petals are “usually over 1 em. long, rounded-obovate"; while in the 
others the petals are said to be “6-8 mm., rarely 1 cm. long, usually 
elliptic-obovate.”” Under the group with petals "over 1 cm. long" 
are Argentina pacifica and A. occidentalis, which in the seventeen 
sheets at hand show petals varying from 1-1.3 em. long, with outlines 
from elliptic-oblong to broadly obovate. In the eastern plant called 
A. litoralis the fifteen sheets before the writer show elliptic to obo- 
vate petals 1-1.3 em. long; not one of them ess than 1. cm. in length. 
This is the common salt marsh plant of New England and eastern 
Canada, and one cannot refrain from expressing regret that Dr. 
Rydberg has never known the full beauty of its large flowers. ‘This 
fundamental distinction of size of petals is, then, a character which is 
not shown by abundant specimens. Whether A. occidentalis is 
separable from A. pacifica is not one of the chief questions of this 
paper, but it is worth recording that the specimen of Baker's no. 3217 
(the type number of А. occidentalis) in the Gray Herbarium is unlike 
the description given by Rydberg in having lanceolate bractlets which 
are quite as long as the sepals, thus answering more nearly the key 
character of А. pacifica. 
Of Argentina Babcockiana, described from Westminster Park and. 
from the shores of Oneida Lake, New York, the writer has no knowl- 
edge; but with A. litoralis, the common species "along the coast and 
in salt marshes, from Labrador, Newfoundland, and Quebec to Long 
Island,” he has long been familiar. This salt marsh plant is clearly 
distinct from Potentilla Anserina of the gravel beaches of the St. Law- 
rence, the St. John, and Lake Champlain, in the dull white tomentum 
of its leaves; the glabrous or early glabrate peduncles, stolons, and 
