224 Rhodora [NOVEMBER 
coincides with the common Alleghanian plant. No stolons of the 
Asiatic plant have been examined but so accurately does it coincide 
with our plant in all the other crucial points that there can be hardly 
a question of their identity. The Asiatic species which seems clearly 
to agree with ours is C. quadrisulcata (Maxim.) Franchet & Savatier,! 
based upon C. lutetiana, var. quadrisulcata Maximowicz,? a plant 
originally described from Amur and distinguished by its 4-sulcate 
fruit, its glabrous stem, and its lance-ovate leaves. The identification 
of this plant of eastern Asia with our Alleghanian woodland species 
is interesting as adding still another to the large group of genera 
and species — Caulophyllum, Podophyllum, Liriodendron, Polygonum 
virginianum, etc.— which are common to these two isolated areas. 
Gray HERBARIUM. 
WEED GROWTH AND UNUSUAL RAINFALL. 
J. Y. BERGEN. 
Tur unusual rainfall throughout the central and northeastern 
states during the summer just past has greatly influenced most kinds 
of vegetation. In the course of a long-continued, hand to hand con- 
test with weeds in a garden of moderate size the writer was led to note 
some differences between the relative abundance and luxuriance of 
growth of certain weeds this year and in ordinary summers. The 
rainfall in and near Boston during July of this summer (1915), 8.85 
inches, has been equaled only twice in 98 years, the July average for 
that whole period being about 3.57 inches? The August rainfall this 
summer is 5.63 inches, while the 98-year average for the month is 
about. 4.01 inches, making the rainfall for the two months almost 
double the usual amount. Farther away from the coast the precipi- 
tation has in many localities been much in excess of the values for 
Boston just cited. 
1 Franch. & Sav. Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 169 (1875). 
? Maxim. Prim. Fl. Amur. 106 (1859). 
3 1818-1870 observations at Roxbury; 1871-1915 observations of U. S. Weather 
Bureau in Boston. 
