Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 17. October, 1915. No. 202. 
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE GRAY HERBARIUM OF HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY.— NEW SERIES, NO. XLIV. 
THE GENUS EUPHRASIA IN NORTH AMERICA. 
M. L. FERNALD AND K. M. WIEGAND. 
ALTHOUGH furnishing by their bright flowers much of the late- 
summer coloring of open habitats in eastern and northern New Eng- 
land and the more northerly regions, the Eyebrights seem to have 
attracted little notice in American botany until the past two decades. 
Michaux collected the characteristic species (Euphrasia canadensis) 
of the region of the city of Quebec on July 21, 1792; but it appeared 
in his Flora without statement of locality and under the indefinite 
name Euphrasia officinalis L. Pursh treated the Michaux plant as 
E. officinalis and also recorded a Labrador plant which he supposed 
to be Willdenow's E. latifolia. Other early American botanists 
apparently did not know of the genus Euphrasia in America; or such 
rare specimens as reached herbaria were treated as E. officinalis or 
varieties of it. 
The first record of a Euphrasia in the United States seems to have 
been by William Oakes, who in 1847 listed as E. officinalis the little 
alpine plant which has subsequently been named E. Oakesii and added 
the significant note: “Stem dwarf, simple; leaves roundish, with 
obtuse teeth; flowers very pale, and extremely minute. It is probably 
E. micrantha Reichenbach, Fl. Exc. p. 358.... In the alpine region of 
the White Mountains. 1844." ! In the 1st edition of Gray's Manual 
Oakes's White Mountain plant appeared as E. officinalis, but with the 
1 Oakes in Hovey's Mag. xiii. 217, 218 (1847). 
