34 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
doubtless to Penobscot Bay. In the interior of New England, how- 
ever, it extends southward in cold upland woods and swamps to the 
mountains of northwestern Connecticut. ‘The other Black Currant 
(Ribes americanum, often called R. floridum) is comparatively rare 
along the coast, but delights in the rich alluvium of streams, chiefly in 
the warm interior regions, growing from the St. John valley in New 
Brunswick to Assinaboia, south to Virginia, Nebraska, and adjacent 
regions. 
The remaining Wine-berry of northern Europe, the Red Whortle- 
berry of the English (Vaccinium Vitis-I[daea) is represented in Green- 
land only by the dwarfer arctic variety minus (var. pumilum Hornem.) ;! 
and this plant (var. minus) * is the common Red Whortleberry or Rock 
or Mountain Cranberry (Pomme de terre of the French Canadian)? 
which abounds from northern Labrador and the subarctic barrens of 
America southward on non-calcareous rocks to Newfoundland and 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and around the coast of Nova Scotia and 
southern New Brunswick to the islands of Penobscot Bay in Maine. 
South of Penobscot Bay Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea (var. minus) is very 
local indeed and it reaches its extreme southern limit at Danvers, 
Essex County, Massachusetts, where two very small isolated patches 
have been found,‘ the only ones known to the writer south of Penobscot 
Bay and the adjacent islands and the mountains of New Hampshire. 
In determining the exact species of “vinber” which was gathered 
by the Norsemen in Vinland, we have a clue in the statement of the 
Groenlandinga Páttr (in the Flatey Book), that “their after-boat was 
filled with ‘vinberjum.’ A cargo [of wood] sufficient for the ship was 
cut, and when the spring came, they made their ship ready and sailed 
away." The inclination of some students has been to discredit the 
accuracy of this saga on the ground, that it would be impossible to 
gather “vínber” in the spring. Storm thus states with unequivocal 
emphasis his own ground for doubt, for to him the statement “evinces 
a remarkable want of knowledge concerning wine and grapes. ‘These 
grapes are discovered in winter, nay even in spring (!). ....thegrapes 
are gathered, too, in the spring (!) and the ship's boat filled with 
!* Forma primaria in Groenlandia nondum observata est." — Lange, Conspectus 
Florae Groenlandicae, Pars 2, 268 (1887). 
2 See Fernald, RHODORA, iv. 231-234 (1902). 
? Among the French of Quebec and Labrador the potato is commonly called patate. 
4 See John Robinson, Flora of Essex County, Massachusetts, 71 (1880). 
