A A 
EU 
1899] Fernald, — Oxytropis campestris in America 85 
OXYTROPIS CAMPESTRIS IN NORTHEASTERN 
AMERICA. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
For many years the handsome Oxytropis, which in June colors, 
with its rosy flowers, miles of gravelly shore along the upper St. John 
river, has been poorly understood by American systematists. This is 
due, in part, to the fact that the plant is scarcely known to the botanists 
of northeastern America except from the too little visited St. John valley, 
and from the region about Quebec ; and, in part, because those to whom 
the plant has been familiar have hardly realized the necessity of secur- 
ing for study more complete material than is found in our herbaria. 
During the past June it was the rare fortune of the author to spend 
some days in the St. John valley ; and there, upon the gravelly delta 
formed at Fort Kent, at the junction of the Fish river with the St. John, 
was found this Oxytropís in the height of its season, with beautiful fresh 
rose-colored flowers, older faded bluish ones, and fairly developed pods 
on the same plant. Most of the plants bore about a score of spikes 
upon peduncles varying from 2 to 4 dm. in height; but plants with as 
many as sixty spikes were not exceptional. 
This species was first reported, apparently, in Hooker's Flora 
Boreali-Americana where he treats Canadian specimens (from Zady 
Dalhousie, Mrs. Percival, and Mrs. Shepard ) — presumably from Isle 
d'Orleans near Quebec — as a form of O. Lamberti (O. Lamberti a"), 
stating that they closely resembled standard figures of that species. In 
1838, Torrey and Gray treated the Quebec plant (from Mrs. Percival) 
likewise as a form of O. Lamberti, though with some apparent hesitation 
(O. Lamberti à ??). : 
The St. John river plant, seemingly identical with that collected on 
Isle d'Orleans by Mrs. Shepard, Professor Brunet and others, was first 
detected during the survey of the * wild lands" of Maine, by Professor 
Goodale. Specimens of the fruiting plant were sent to Dr. Gray who 
wrote, “This seems to be near O. Lamberti, var. d., Zor. and Gray. 
However, I have a fancy that it may be O. Uralensis.” 3 Later the plant 
was said to agree “ pretty well with O. Uralensis, Z., var. b," 4 an arctic 
plant. 
1 Hook. Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 147. 2 Torr. & Gr. Fl. i. 339. 
3 Goodale in Prelim. Rep. Nat. Hist. & Geol. Me. (1861), 366. 
4 Goodale, l. c. (1862) 125. 
