1917) Fernald,— Specific Characters of Hepatica americana 45 
THE SPECIFIC CHARACTERS OF HEPATICA AMERICANA. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
Ir has long been known that the common American plant which 
has passed as Hepatica triloba Gilib. (1781) or more properly as H. 
nobilis Schreb. (1771) differs in some respects from the typical Euro- 
pean plant, and in 1814 Pursh treated it as H. triloba a obtusa with 
the lobes of the leaves rounded and flowers “generally smaller than 
in the European plant.” ! In 1817 De Candolle separated it as H: 
triloba B. americana? on account of its much more pilose petioles and 
scapes, smaller flowers, and the more rounded lobes of the leaves. 
Somewhat later Ker took it up as H. americana, saying “We have no 
hesitation in recording the american plant as a distinct species from 
the european triloba, to which it has been generally appended for a 
variety. The lobes of the leaves are rounder and less pointed in the 
american plant, the flower-stem and leaf-stalks shaggily furred, the 
whole altogether smaller and of different appearance.” 3 Subsequent 
authors for the most part have not recognized the distinctness of the 
American and European plants, although the essentially continental 
distribution of the European species and the essentially Alleghanian 
range of the American indicate that the identity of the two should at 
least be questioned; since very few, if any, plants are strictly identical 
in these two very dissimilar areas. Examination of abundant fruit- 
ing material of the American plant shows it to possess an achene quite 
unlike that of the European species. In H. nobilis of Europe the 
plump, conic-ovoid achene tapers to a short thick beak which is 
terminated by the sessile stigma. In the American plant, on the other 
hand, the much more slender fusiform or lance-subulate achene is 
terminated by a very slender and definite, often curved, style. Pos- 
sessing this definite fruit-character along with its usually much smaller 
flowers and its rounder-lobed leaves, the Alleghanian plant seems to be 
an endemic American species which should be called Hepatica ameri- 
cana (DC.) Ker. 
Whether the plant of eastern Asia is identical with the eastern 
American or the European species the writer is unable to determine 
since he has had access to no Asiatic material. 
1! Pursh. Fl. Am. Sept. ii. 391 (1814). 
2 DC. Syst. i. 216 (1817). 
3 Ker in Edwards, Bot. Reg. v. t. 387 (1819). 
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