SO Rhodora [May 
PTELEA MOLLIS VAR. CRYPTONEURA, A WAFER-ASH OF 
THE GEORGIA SAND-HILLS. 
HARLEY Harris BARTLETT. 
In the winter of 1907 I sent to a considerable number of corre- 
spondents specimens of a wafer-ash from the fall line sand-hill region 
near Thomson, Georgia. Field observation had convinced me that 
it was not Ptelea trifoliata, neither did it correspond with any of the 
descriptions which had recently been published by Greene, Small, or 
Heller. Because of the descriptive appropriateness of the name, which 
had been given in 1849 by M. A. Curtis to a plant of North Carolina, 
I distributed my material as Ptelea mollis. The Biltmore Herbarium 
had previously sent out specimens from Wrightsville Sound, North 
Carolina (near Wilmington, the type locality of Ptelea mollis), which 
accorded with Curtis’s original description but differed in several 
regards from my Georgian specimens. 
The original publication of Ptelea mollis by Curtis! was as follows: 
" PTELEA MOLLIS, n. sp.— P. trifoliata, 8 mollis, Torr. & Gray? I. 
680. Lateral leaflets oval, the terminal obovate, with an abrupt acute 
point, the under side with the petioles, panicles and young branches, 
clothed with a soft whitish silky villus; cymes compact, with short 
branches; style long; filaments equalling the anthers.— Wilmington, 
N. Car. Also, Newbern, N. C., George Wilson, Esq.: the low country 
of S. Car.; Rev. T. J. Young. 
The style in this species is twice as long as in P. trifoliata, while the 
filaments are only about one third or one fourth as long. The mature 
leaves are much more rigid. With the exception of the style, this 
plant is much smaller in all its parts, and the sepals [are] very decidu- 
ous. Flowers tetrandrous.” 
Although Curtis described his plant as a new species, he took its 
name frem the older Ptelea trifoliata B mollis T. & G. Since he himself 
questioned the synonym, we may compare his diagnosis with that of 
Torrey and Gray ?: — 
“ Ptelea trifoliata .... 8 mollis: branchlets, petioles, and lower sur- 
1 New and Rare Plants, chiefly of the Carolinas, M. A. Curtis. Am. Journ. Sci. 
ser. 2, vii. (1849), p. 406. 
2 Fl i. (1840), p. 680. 
