206 Rhodora [SEPTEMBER 
Correns excluded all plants with contabescent anthers,! it is of interest 
that the 2d form hermaphrodite, with contabescent anthers only, 
should (with one possible exception) give no progeny more closely 
approximating the pistillate form than itself. It is furthermore 
noteworthy that there should be 2d form hermaphrodites among the 
progeny with typical anthers but with filaments long and straight, 
as in the 1st form, and that these should have but one type of flower, 
(i. e. should show no tendency toward gynomonoecism.) 
Neither out-door observations of wild plants nor garden and green- 
house cultures sustain Ludwig’s statement that the pistillate plants 
of Plantago lanceolata flower later in the season than the hermaphro- 
dites. After the height of the flowering season has passed, pistillate 
stocks seem unusually abundant because the continued growth of 
the unpollinated stigmas makes them unusually conspicuous. Then 
too, gynomonoecious types often have only pistillate flowers at the 
tops of the spikes, and late in the season might be carelessly classified 
as pure pistillates. 
BUREAU OF PLANT Inpustry, Washington, D. C. 
Tur RANGE or THE BLACK BIRCH TO BE RESTRICTED.— In all the 
manuals of botany and tree books where it is treated we are assured 
that the black birch, Betula lenta, often called the sweet birch and 
cherry birch, ranges east to Newfoundland. But in fact its eastern 
limit is close to the eastern boundary of New Hampshire, and a line 
drawn from Portland, Maine, to Montreal will mark its eastern and 
northern limit at least in the United States. The only places in 
Maine where I have seen it are in the Piscataqua valley, and the only 
specimens I have seen from Maine grew there. Specimens labeled as 
black birch are found from places farther east but the most cursory 
examination shows them to be incorrectly named. I have botanized 
in all of the Maritime Provinces and in Newfoundland, and found as 
I expected that there was no such tree there. 
The provincial botanists having never seen the real black birch 
think that when they find a yellow birch (B. lutea L.) with black bark 
1 “Rein gefüllt blühende Stöcke, bei denen die Staubgefüsse in Füllblütter ver- 
wandelt sind, sind [als rein weibliche Pflanzen] eingerechnet, solche mit lauter konta- 
beszenten Antheren jedoch nicht, obwohl sie physiologisch auch rein weiblich sind.’ 
Ber. d. d. bot. Ges. xxvi a (1908) p. 691. 
