IRbofcora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 

 Vol. 18. July, 1916. No. 211. 



THE GENUS SABATIA IN NEW ENGLAND. 



M. L. Fernald. 



(Plate 121.) 



In southern New England the genus Sabatia is represented by some 

 of the most beautiful plants of our flora, members of a genus which 

 finds its greatest development on the coastal plain southward. The 

 writer's propensity for northern exploration had taken him for many 

 summers to regions beyond the range of the genus and it was not 

 until the summer of 1913 that he first saw any of the plants growing: 

 the beautiful slender S. campanulata (L.) Torr. or S. gracilis (Michx.) 

 Salisb. and the splendid large-flowered plant which in Massachusetts 

 has always passed as S. chloroidcs (Michx.) Pursh or recently as 

 S. dodecandra (L.) BSP. 



The material of S. campanulata collected by the writer on peaty and 

 sandy pond-shores at Barnstable on Cape Cod is quite like the Nan- 

 tucket plant and specimens collected by others (Williams, Greenman, 

 Sinnott, Faxon) at Barnstable. This plant has for some reason been 

 considered as possibly S. stcllaris Pursh or as transitional to S. stellaris 

 and it was mentioned by Gray in the Synoptical Flora as " an ambigu- 

 ous form." This confusion of the two species arose presumably 

 through over-emphasis on the length of the calyx-lobes and the style- 

 branches and the breadth of the leaves, characters which, as well 

 pointed out by Bicknell, 1 "are unstable in a very marked degree." 

 Mr. Bicknell, however, notes two characters which the writer has 

 independently observed as sound, and the words of the former may be 



« Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Bot. CI. xlii. 31 (1915). 



