192 Rhodora [SEPTEMBER 
color being present only at its base, although in this respect the plants 
do not differ from some specimens of the variety. Finally, S. officinale 
seems, so far as my experience goes, to be the smaller plant of the two; 
my tallest individual is only about 50 cm. high, while the variety is 
almost always taller than this. Whether this character would hold 
in a larger series of specimens I am not able to say. 
STOUGHTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 
A PURPLE-FRUITED Asu.— In June, 1911, Mrs. H. K. Morrell sent 
from Gradiner, Maine, a branch of Fraxinus americana L. with deep 
reddish-purple fruit with a query as to its identity and the remark 
that “ours about the house have green wings and these red.” The 
present writer then made it a point to watch the White Ash in the 
neighborhood of Boston and, although the majority of trees bear 
green or greenish-yellow fruit, occasional colonies were found having 
the fruit a beautiful purple, which renders the trees conspicuously 
different in aspect from the ordinary greenish-fruited form. The 
purple-fruited form seems not to have been distinguished but it is 
so pronouncedly different in aspect that it deserves the designation: 
FRAXINUS AMERICANA L., forma iodocarpa, n. f., fructibus purpureis. 
— Marne: Gardiner, June 13, 1911 (Jennie M. H. Morrell). Massa- 
CHUSETTS: Winchester, June 17, 1911 (F. F. Forbes and M. L. Fernald). 
— M. L. Fernap, Gray Herbarium. 
Volume 14, no. 164, including pages 165 to 176 was issued 23 August, 1912. 
