44 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
` of the hypanthium, but elsewhere on the bud cone strongly ascending. 
As a rule the flower-buds never open. 
Bureau or PrawT INpustry, Washington, D. C. 
EXPLANATION OF PLATE 111. 
Fig. a. Oenothera Robinsonii. Inflorescence of main stem. 
Fig. b. Oenothera Robinsonii. Inflorescence of side branch (cf. fig. c). 
Fig. c. Oenothera venosa. Inflorescence of side branch (cf. fig. b). 
Fig. d. Oenothera cleistantha. Inflorescence of main stem, in fruit. 
Fig. e. Oenothera cleistantha. Inflorescence of side branch, in flower. 
[| 
THE NORTH AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVES OF DRYOP- 
TERIS SPINULOSA, VAR. DILATATA. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
THE present writer, who has rarely intruded upon the preserves of 
the fern-specialists, ventures with some trepidation to discuss a plant 
which has already had more than its full share of attention. But, 
in an endeavor to settle as exactly as possible the identities of all the 
vascular plants known from Newfoundland, he has found himself 
constantly perplexed by the current treatments of the plant variously 
known in eastern America as Dryopteris spinulosa (Müll.) Kuntze, 
var. dilatata (Hoffm.) Underw. or Aspidium spinulosum (Müll.) Sw., 
var. dilatatum (Hoffm.) Hook. or Dryopteris dilatata (Hoffm.) Gray. 
It has long been known that the common broad-fronded plant of 
the Hudsonian and Canadian areas of eastern America, which passes 
as Dryopteris spinulosa, var. dilatata, has the indusia quite glabrous, 
in this character exactly coinciding with the somewhat narrower- 
fronded D. spinulosa and diverging from var. dilatata of Europe in 
which the indusia, as regularly described by European authors, have 
the margins glandular-ciliate. In fact, in some American manuals 
D. spinulosa and its var. dilatata (or D. dilatata) are separated from var. 
intermedia (or D. intermedia) by their glabrous indusia, as opposed to 
the distinctly glandular indusia of the latter plant. In view of this 
departure from the European type it seems somewhat strange that 
American fern-students have clung so tenaciously to the name of the 
