74 Rhodora [APRIL 
me sketches and a description of it, saying: “R. persicarioides is 
represented in the Linnaean Herbarium by two sheets. The speci- 
men collected by Kalm, which bears no indication of locality, is a tiny 
procumbent plant about a dm. high with narrowly lance-oblong 
leaves, not noticeably cordate at the base (but badly crumpled), 
and small fruiting calyx bearing three large, almost reticulate grains 
(now brownish, but apparently pale when fresh) which almost entirely 
conceal the tiny valves, which bear two or three curved teeth. For 
the most part the teeth are very inconspicuous and I had something 
of a search to find one fit to sketch.” 
In the Gray Herbarium is a fragment, marked in Gray's hand- 
writing “ Rumex persicarioides (K) Hb. Linn." It is a mere scrap 
from a lateral branch of the inflorescence, giving no hint of the leaf 
characters, but it does show the swollen, elliptic-ovate tubercles 
so characteristic of the plant of Prince Edward Island. As to the 
locality where Kalm found this plant, there is no indication on the 
label. We know, however, that Kalm on July 23, 1749, started from 
Lake Champlain for Montreal following for some distance the Richelieu 
River and that during August and September of the same year he 
journeyed down the St. Lawrence River to Bay St. Paul, far below the 
limit of tide-water!  Diagonally across the river from here, at Ca- 
couna, Rumex persicarioides is definitely known; and quite recently 
Bro. Marie-Victorin has collected it in Chambly, P. Q. He writes 
that a colony of the plants were growing on one of the small islands in 
Chambly Basin of the Richelieu River, midway between Lake Cham- 
plain and the St. Lawrence. It seems quite probable, then, in spite 
of Linnaeus's cited locality “Virginia,” that Kalm found his speci- 
mens at some such place on the Richelieu River or the lower St. 
Lawrence, the region where we now know the species in its greatest 
abundance. In view of their perfect agreement there seems little 
doubt of the identity of the fragment in the Gray Herbarium with 
Linnaeus's type. 
Quoting Mr. Blake again, “The second specimen was raised at the 
Upsala Garden from seed collected by Kalm, and, while a much taller 
plant (about 2.5 dm.) with more elongate internodes, it is in all its 
characters identical with the specimen of Kalm. The interesting 
fact concerning this H[ortus] U[psalensis] plant is that the label is 
1 Kalm, Reise nach nordlichen Amerika, iii, 517—525 (1754). 
