1899] Williams, — New England Botanical Club 37 
HALENIA DEFLEXA, Grisebach, var. heterantha. Similar to the 
species, but with the corollas all spurless, or only the earliest bearing 
spurs ; the lower spurless flowers mostly smaller than the others. — Æ. 
heterantha, Griseb. in Hook. Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 68, t. 156 B.— 
Originally collected in Newfoundland (Miss Brenton) and subsequently 
on the Caribou Islands, Labrador (Martin). Recently found by the 
author at a number of Maine stations, — Houlton, August, 1897 ; Island 
Falls, September, 1897 ; Mattawamkeag, East Eddington and Winslow, 
September, 1898, — growing by itself or with the typical spurred form, 
: on damp gravelly wooded banks, or on pasture-knolls. 
Occasionally plants of this spurless variety are found with the 
flowers singularly contorted and converted into clusters of foliaceous 
bracts. Both the variety and the typical plant may be looked for, from 
late July to September, in New Brunswick, Maine, and western Massa- 
chusetts. Only one station for the species, and that in the northern 
portion of the state, is given in Perkins's list of Vermont plants; and, 
so far as we are informed, the plant has not been collected in New 
Hampshire, not even in the White Mountains. Reports of either form 
of the species in those states or elsewhere in New England will be of 
great interest, since its distribution in New England, as now under- 
stood, is decidedly unique for a plant of so general occurrence a little 
further north ; most boreal plants which reach western Massachusetts 
being abundant, at least in the mountains, in New Hampshire and 
Vermont. 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB. 
E. F. WILLIAMS. 
Tue New England Botanical Club was established on December 
roth, 1895. A number of gentlemen interested in Botany met on that 
date at Professor Farlow’s house in Cambridge, and before the evening 
was over an association was resolved upon and committees appointed 
to accomplish its organization. 
As far as we are able to ascertain, this is the first club established, 
in tne words of its constitution, *for the promotion of social inter- 
course and the dissemination of local and general information among 
gentlemen interested in the flora of New England.” 
That the time was ripe for the formation of such a club was made 
evident, when Mr. Warren H. Manning, in the spring of 1894, under- 
took the formation of an herbarium to represent the flora of the Boston 
