Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 19. November, 1917. No. 227. 
THE VARIETIES OF CHIMAPHILA UMBELLATA. 
S. F. BuaKkeE. 
THE common Pipsissewa or Wintergreen (Chimaphila umbellata) 
has long been regarded as a species of comparatively uniform charac- 
ters and of a very wide range, including Eurasia from south-central 
Siberia to Norway, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the greater 
part of North America from New Brunswick and Quebec southward 
interruptedly to the mountains of Chiapas! and westward to the 
Pacific, and the Japanese Islands. It has also been recorded ? recently 
from Santo Domingo, but the specimens from that island prove to 
represent a very distinct endemic species, which I have elsewhere 
described ê as Chimaphila domingensis. Aside from an unsuccessful 
attempt by Alefeld’ in 1856 to distinguish specifically between the 
plant of eastern North America and that of western North America 
and Europe, no division of the species had been proposed until very 
recently except by DeCandolle, who described the Mexican form as a 
variety in 1839. But when a large amount of material, representing 
nearly the whole range of the species, is examined, several rather 
marked and nearly constant differences appear between the plant of 
Eurasia and Japan on the one hand and the American forms on the 
other; and the latter, when carefully studied, prove to be divisible 
1 My reference of the plant to Guatemala, Journ. Bot. lii. 169 (1914) was apparently due to 
a slip of the pen, as I can find no record of specimens. 
2 Urb. Symb. Ant. v. 453 (1908). 
3 Blake, Journ. Bot. lii. 169 (1914). The record by Rydberg (N. Am. FI. xxix. 31 (1914)), 
who recognizes C. domingensis, of C. corymbosa (= C. umbellata) from Santo Domingo is 
undoubtedly erroneous. 
4 Alefeld, Linn. xxviii. 78—84 (1856). 
