1912] Blake,— Sisymbrium officinale 191 
true S. officinale, which according to my notes “far outnumbered the 
variety leiocarpum which was also present." A number of plants 
were collected. This occurrence, the first indubitable one for the 
state, led me to watch for the plant thereafter, and I was rewarded by 
two more “finds,” though of very small colonies. On 30 July, in a 
pasture in Shelburne, not far from Shelburne Pond, I found and 
collected three plants of the type. I do not recall that any individuals 
of the variety were present. On 2 Augusta solitary plant (sheet 3580) 
was taken in a field near a farmhouse in Colchester, near Barney 
Point. All these Vermont records have been briefly published by 
Mrs. Flynn in Bull. 7, Vermont Botanical Club, p. 16, 17 (May, 1912). 
In a comparison of the twenty-six plants of Sisymbrium officinale 
now in my possession with a number of specimens, mostly freshly 
picked, of var. leiocarpum, other differences than the pod-character 
have appeared. In the first place, in S. officinale the pedicels and 
axis of the main spike-like inflorescence, as well as of the usually 
horizontal lateral branches (which in both forms so generally come 
off at or above the middle of the stem, except in case of an injury to 
the main axis lower down,— in which event several ascending branches 
develop from the upper leaf axils, much as in Lactuca under similiar 
conditions,— that one of the St. Paul specimens, only 25 em. high, 
with four well developed branches in its first five em. of height, seems 
worthy of notice on this account) are more or less densely pubescent 
with the same short spreading hairs as are the pods. In var. leiocar- 
pum the pedicels, like the pods, are glabrous, while the flowering axes 
are glabrous except for a few scattered enlarged retrorse hairs with 
swollen usually purplish bases, reminding one of miniature Rubus 
prickles (which also occur in the type, among the much more numer- 
ous smaller hairs). Similiar hairs occur on the main stem in both 
forms, but in true S. officinale they are again intermixed with smaller 
hairs, far outnumbering them, similar to those on the pods. 
A few further differentiae of more doubtful import may be men- 
tioned. The runcinate lower leaves of both forms are indistinguisha- 
ble, but in S. officinale the hastately three-lobed, or even unlobed and 
linear-lanceolate, leaves of the flowering parts are appressed- 
pubescent, sometimes densely so, above and beneath, whereas the 
variety has these leaves glabrous or with a few hairs on the lower 
surface, rarely on the upper. Again, none of the S. officinale has the 
purple of the stem so extensive as it very often is in the variety, the 
