50 Rhodora [Marcu 
ance, in the other two plants the somewhat less firm styles remain 
ascending or often even appressed. These differences in the fruiting 
heads, as well as the general habit of the small-headed plant, are clearly 
brought out in the drawing kindly prepared by Mr. Charles E. Faxon. 
In the fruiting heads, probably, are found the best marked char- 
acters for distinguishing the northern plant from 4. virginiana. Though 
the larger white flowers are generally quite distinct they are subject to 
such variation as to make them a final criterion in determining the 
northern species only when associated with the habital, foliage, and 
fruiting characters already emphasized, for the flowers of the small- 
headed species are sometimes small and those of the large-headed A. 
virginiana are not infrequently petaloid. The Anemone of the northern 
river-banks, however, is a much earlier species than the coarser more 
southern 4. virginiana. In its flowering season it more nearly resem- 
bles the even more southern A. cylindrica. In central Maine the 
slender white-flowered species of the shaded river-cliffs and sheltered 
banks is well in flower by the middle of June, and its fruiting heads 
are practically mature a month later, when the coarse A. virginiana of 
the sunny gravelly slopes and open woods begins to bloom. 
The smaller-headed plant, as already suggested, is, in Maine at 
least, the northern representative of the group including 4. cylindrica 
and A. virginiana. It is apparently a common plant along all the 
northern rivers coming south on the Penobscot to Veazie, and on the 
Androscoggin to Gilead. So far as known its range does not overlap 
that of 4. cylindrica, which reaches its northern limit on the lower 
Androscoggin. In the Penobscot valley, however, its range slightly 
overlaps that of A. virginiana. There the latter species reaches its 
northern limit in Maine on the dry gravelly esker skirting the river 
only a mile or two above the cliffs at Veazie, where occurs the southern- 
most known station of the more slender plant. In such a region 
of overlapping ranges one might expect to find forms intermediate 
between the two species, but as yet none have been detected ; perhaps 
because the very dissimilar habitats of the plants, the one on damp 
sheltered cliffs and ledges, the other on dry sunny gravel, may tend to 
keep them apart. The slender small-headed plant, differing from the 
species with which it has long been associated, not only in well marked 
structural characters, but in range, habitat, and flowering season as 
well, is here proposed, with confidence that it merits such recognition, 
as a distinct species : 
