136 Rhodora [AuGusT 
land, and Pacific North America has the inflorescence, when well 
developed, a loose corymbose cyme with 2-30 flowers; the sepals are 
3-4 mm. long; the broadly obovate or roundish petals 4-7 mm. long, 
4-7 mm. broad, sessile or nearly so, 9-13-nerved; stamens 25-50; 
carpels 25-50, forming globose fruiting heads 3.5-5 mm. long; and 
the achenes are merely short-tipped. The slender, ordinarily filiform 
and repent branches of R. reptans, on the other hand, bear solitary 
flowers; the sepals are 2-2.8 mm. long; the petals narrowly obovate 
to oblong, 2.5-5 mm. long, 1-3 mm. broad, usually with a definite 
claw, 3-9-nerved; stamens 10-20; carpels 15-20, forming a hemi- 
spherical or spherical fruiting head 1.5-3 mm. long; and the achenes 
are distinctly beaked. 
R. Flammula, var. intermedius Hook. has long passed as a plant tran- 
sitional between R. Flammula and R. reptans, and in recent years it 
has been made to include very diverse elements. Thus, in the Synop- 
tical Flora it is said to be the same as R. Flammula, var. unalaschcensis 
Ledeb., to have “akenes of the type or more beaked,” and to occur 
from “Shore of Lake Ontario! to California and Oregon and north- 
ward. (N. Asia, Eu.) Largest forms from western coast, nearly 
approaching the type; very slender and linear-leaved as well as small 
broader-leaved forms pass into Var. reptans, E. Meyer.” 2 Examina- 
tion of the material upon which this statement was based shows that 
the Lake Ontario plant, the “very slender and linear-leaved” form, 
has the floral and achenial characters of R. reptans; the Newfoundland 
plant of Robinson & Schrenk is typical R. Flammula; and the Cali- 
fornia and Oregon material examined by Gray, the “largest forms from 
western coast”, has the flowers and fruit, likewise, of R. Flammula. 
This variety, thus made up of elements belonging on the one hand 
to R. Flammula, on the other to R. reptans, was naturally described by 
Gray, as having “akenes of the type or more beaked.” The status 
of this very mixed variety was well characterized in the 7th edition of 
Gray’s Manual, where R. Flammula was said to pass “through an 
undefinable var. INTERMEDIUS Hook., into var. reptans.” 3 
It is quite certain that, when he published his R. Flammula, var. 
intermedius [published as intermedia], Hooker had no thought of includ- 
ing the R. Flammula of the Pacific slope, for he distinctly wrote: “It 
does not appear that any of the varieties are found on the Rocky 
“1 Eastward to St. John’s, Newfoundland, Robinson & Schrenk,”’ etc. 
2 Gray, Syn. FI. 1. pt. 1, 26, 27 (1895). 
3 Robinson & Fernald in Gray, Man. ed. 7, 395 (1908). 
