100 Rhodora [JUNE 
ANOTHER STATION FOR CENTAUREA DIFFUSA. 
RoBERT A. WARE. 
In 1902, Centaurea diffusa Lam. was reported from Norfolk, Massa- 
chusetts.' As this plant of continental Europe seems not yet to have 
made its appearance in this country to any considerable extent it may 
be well to record its presence in Plainville, Massachusetts. 
My friend and companion of many walks and drives, Dr. H. S. 
Kilby of North Attleboro, to whom indeed I am indebted for first 
arousing my botanical interests, had noted the strange plants and, in 
accordance with a pleasant custom, planned a trip which should reveal 
them to me. Without intimating the object of the trip, he took me 
on August 7, 1909, to the neighborhood, which is well removed from 
railroad and important thoroughfares — driving slowly that I too 
might have the joy of discovery. No doubt my enthusiastic expres- 
sions of interest were counted sufficiently rewarding, but not until 
specimens had found their way to the Gray Herbarium was their 
identity established. 
Last year in July, I visited the station again. The plants were 
very numerous, occupying an open area about 45 X 90 m. of hard, dry, 
gravelly soil about a cellar where once stood a dwelling, since burned. 
They were from 2 to 8 dm. high, had a stout, elongated, vertical root, 
with few fibrous rootlets, and were grayish-green and scabrous through- 
out. Such basal leaves as they may have possessed earlier had 
disappeared at the time of my visits. "Those of the stem and branches 
were not conspicuous, the uppermost being very small and entire, the 
lower pinnate with few, very narrow divisions. The numerous small 
heads, 2-5 mm. in diameter through the involucre, terminated the 
stiff, divergent branches and branchlets. "The appressed tips of the 
outer involucral bracts were deeply and sharply pectinate-ciliate. 
The flowers were mostly white, with relatively few a delicate pink, 
and others a deeper rose-purple. Later examination with a lens, 
showed the pectinate tips to be minutely spinose, the inner bracts 
smooth, not pectinate, but with scarious margins more or lesslacerate 
and a sharp, extended mid-rib, the achenes smooth and pappus setose. 
1 RHODORA, 4: 249. 1902. 
