12 Rhodora [JANUARY 
few extending a short distance up the loose racemes. The ascending 
stems are sometimes branched, and then always from near the base. 
The pedicels are barely one third the length of the calyx. The flowers 
are blue, and very small, and the deeply five-cleft calyx is open in fruit. 
Bentham, in the * Handbook of the British Flora," says of this plant, 
* Flowers in early summer, and dies soon after." How completely this 
is the case the writer had occasion to observe. The plant was first 
noted on May 23d, when it was at its best; on June 12th, only a few 
dried specimens were found, after diligent search. 
'There is a specimen of this plant in the Gray Herbarium, collected 
at Edmonton, Ontario, and also one from a cemetery at Ithaca, N. Y., 
where it is said to be abundant. As far as I am able to find out, this 
is its first appearance noted in New England. — Emile F. WILLIAMS, 
Boston, Mass. 
A NEW WILD LETTUCE FROM EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 
B. L. ROBINSON. 
(Plate 2.) 
AN interesting and noteworthy Lactuca has recently been discovered 
at Marshfield, Mass., by Mr. Charles H. Morss of Medford. In habit 
and color of corollas it resembles blue-flower specimens of Z. /eucophaea. 
From this species, however, it is clearly distinguished by its white pap- 
pus and broad, flat achenes, which are provided with a short but filitorm 
beak. From our other eastern species, Z. canadensis, integrifolia, 
and hirsuta, it differs not less markedly in its blue flowers and shorter- 
beaked, more numerously ribbed achenes. All efforts to identify the 
plant with southern or western types, or with any of the numerous 
species of the Old World, have proved unsuccessful, and it seems best 
to place it on record as a new type. 
Lactuca Morssii. Stem simple, strict, leafy, 1 to 3m. high, 
somewhat hirsute toward the base: leaves runcinate-pinnatifid, mostly 
5-lobed, 1.2 to 2 dm. long, about half as broad, borne upon broadly- 
winged cordate-clasping petioles; the lower leaves sparingly hirsute 
beneath, upon the midrib and wings of the petioles, otherwise, like the 
upper ones, quite glabrous; lobes shallowly dentate ; terminal seg- 
ment mostly deltoid or transversely rhombic, rather abruptly acumi- 
nate, or in the uppermost leaves provided with a lanceolate apical 
lobe: panicle ample, 5 to 6 dm. long; branches ascending; heads 
