244 Rhodora [NOVEMBER 
capsula 5-6 mm. diametro; stigma 2.6-3 mm. diametro.— Chima- 
phila acuta Rydb.! in Britton, N. Am. Fl. xxix. 31 (1914).— New 
Mexico and Arizona.— New Mexico: Black Horse Ridge, Baldy 
Mtn., near Elizabethtown, 3050 m., Oct. 1898, Mrs. O. St. John (U. S. 
Nat. Herb.); Mogollon Mts., Socorro Co., Aug. 1900, Wooton (U. S. 
Nat. Herb.); near West Fork of Gila R., Mogollon Mts., Socorro Co., 
2625 m., Aug. 1903, Metcalfe 572 (U. S. Nat. Herb.). ARIZONA: 
rich soil, San Francisco Mts., near Flagstaff, July 1891, McDougal 
480 (U. S. Nat. Herb.); dry woods, near Partridge Spring, San Fran- 
cisco Mts. Forest Reservation, 2000 m., July 1901, Leiberg 5679 (U.S. 
Nat. Herb.); top of “Rim-rock,” Tanto Basin, 2 Aug. 1887, Mearns 
136 (TYPE in herb. N. Y. Bot. Gard.). 
Our southwestern form of Chimaphila was distinguished by Dr. 
Rydberg under the name C. acuta, and separated in his key by its 
sepals “longer then broad, acute” from all its relatives of the C. 
umbellata alliance. There is no material of Chimaphila from Arizona_ 
and New Mexico, the area assigned to C. acuta by Rydberg, in the 
Gray Herbarium, but through the courtesy of Dr. N. L. Britton and 
Mr. W. R. Maxon I have been able to examine the type sheet of C. 
acuta in the herbarium of the New York Botanic Garden and six other 
sheets from this region in the National Herbarium. Examination 
of these specimens shows that the sharply pointed sepals upon which 
Dr. Rydberg relied in separating C. acuta are not a constant feature, 
although sometimes strikingly developed. They vary, even in the 
same specimen, from acute or acuminate to obtuse, and in shape, 
while usually ovate and distinctly longer than broad, are sometimes 
suborbicular, bluntly round-tipped, and quite indistinguishable from 
the ordinary form of eastern or western specimens. The material 
examined is divided nearly equally into groups with obtuse and with 
acute sepals, so that the character on which the species was based can 
hardly be considered of sufficient constancy for use in differentiation. 
It is not too much to say that more variation is shown by the seven 
sheets of this form examined, in respect to the character of the sepals, 
than by all the other material of C. umbellata which I have seen. But 
although the isolation of this form has failed to fix a uniform and 
distinctive type of sepal upon it, it has resulted in the development 
of a characteristic leaf. In all the other ‘American forms the usually 
broader leaves bear a noticeably greater number of teeth which extend 
below the middle or almost to the base of the lamina. 
Gray HERBARIUM. 
