1899] Fernald, — Varieties of Aster and Solidago 189 
Fernald) : New HAmPsHIRE, Lovers’ Walk, Lisbon, Oct. 4, 1887, Sept. 
17, 1888, Littleton, Sept. 15, 1888, Wallace Hill Road, Bethlehem, 
Sept. 19, 1888, near Profile House, Sept. 22, 1888, etc. (Æ. & C. E. 
Faxon). Passing imperceptibly through less pubescent specimens to 
the glabrous form. 
A. PUNICEUS, L., var. compactus (4. puniceus X tardiflorus, var. 
lancifolius, Fernald, Bot. Gaz. xxi. 278). Further study of this plant, 
both in the field and in, the herbarium, has shown it to be a very 
characteristic form of A. puniceus. In the fall of 1896 an extensive 
area was examined by Mr. Walter Deane and the writer, on the banks 
of the Mystic River in West Somerville, Massachusetts, where this 
plant was very luxuriant and predominated over all other species. 
'The plants were evidently fertile, and, though a careful search was 
made, no specimens of A. tardiflorus or its var. lancifolius could be 
found in the region. During the same year the plant was collected by 
Mr. Robert Cameron in Northampton, Massachusetts; in the fall of 
1897, Mr. J. M. Greenman secured it at Walpole, Massachusetts ; re- 
cently Miss E. L. Shaw has called my attention to it in Lexington, and 
Dr. G. G. Kennedy has shown me specimens collected by him at 
Milton, in 1894. A plant from New Haven, Connecticut, collected by 
Mr. A. L. Winton, is also very near this variety. 
Only at the original station for this plant, at Ashland, Massachusetts, 
has Aster tardiflorus, var. lancifolius been found with it. There these 
two plants and typical 4. puniceus were collected together in 1878 by 
the late Dr. Thomas Morong ; and it was this evidence which first sug- 
gested that the plant was a possible hybrid. In view of the extensive 
range of the plant, its almost general isolation from one or both of the 
supposed parents, and its tolerably constant characters, there seems 
little ground to regard it a hybrid. On the other hand, though the 
typical form of the plant is quite unique in habit, many forms occur 
which connect it directly with true 4. puniceus. For this reason it seems 
best to treat it as a variety of this species. Aster puniceus, var. com- 
pactus was described as a hybrid in the Botanical Gazette, and there is 
little to add to the characterization as there published. Its characters 
may be briefly summarized as follows : — 
Stem stout, hispid: leaves very thick, narrowly sub-rhomboidal in 
outline, with unequal coarse often spreading teeth : branches of the in- 
florescence generally distinctly shorter than the large upper leaves, 
monocephalous or with many compactly clustered large violet heads, 
about 1 cm. high (not 4 to 6 in. as accidently printed in the original 
description). 
Among some plants brought by Mr. Robert Cameron in 1896 from 
Northampton, Massachusetts, to the Harvard Botanic Garden was a 
hispid form of Aster puniceus, in inflorescence somewhat resembling 
the var. compactus, but with the lanceolate leaves much narrower than 
