2 Rhodora ` [JANUARY 
of the species includes a great number of fluctuations in the size of 
flowers, length of pedicels, length of capsules and other features which 
are paralleled by the fluctuations in the others. 
Typical E. angustifolium, as it occurs in Europe, Asia and generally 
across the cool-temperate portions of North America, has the leaves 
long-attenuate at apex and without obvious lateral nerves. This 
plant commonly reaches a considerable stature, luxuriant colonies 
being sometimes 2 m. high, although in arid or sterile situations the 
plant may be only 0.5 m. in height. The inflorescence of this typical 
E. angustifolium is very elongate, tapering at summit, becoming 1.7- 
7.5 dm. long. This typical form of the species is, as said, widely 
distributed across North America and is the plant familiar to most 
people as E. angustifolium. 
In southern Alaska, especially from the Aleutian Islands to Sitka, 
occurs an extreme form of the plant with very large leaves and leafy- 
bracted inflorescences. In this plant the leafy bracts of the raceme 
are 2.3—4 cm. broad and these, as well as the foliage leaves, have the 
secondary nerves very prominent beneath. This is the plant described 
by Haussknecht as E. angustifolium, forma macrophyllum and said 
by him to occur in various parts of extreme northern Eurasia but to be 
absent from North America, except in the Alaskan region. An exactly 
similar plant, however, occurs on Brion Island, the outermost of the 
Magdalen Island group in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a region in which 
we have learned to expect frequent identities with the plants of the 
Alaskan area. This plant, in America restricted to Alaska and the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence region, would seem to be of more than formal 
value and is here taken up as a definite geographic variety: 
The only phase of E. angustifolium known to the writer from the 
coast of Labrador is a dwarf plant often flowering when only 1 dm. 
high, but in the larger plants attaining a height of 5 dm. In this 
plant the leaves are very much shorter than in typieal E. angustifolium 
and the mature inflorescence is much shorter than in the typical 
form of the species, the median cauline leaves being only 3-7 cm. long 
and the mature inflorescences ranging from 0.4-1.3 dm. in length. 
This extreme variation with short leaves and short inflorescences is a 
characteristic plant also of Greenland and it occurs locally southward 
to Newfoundland and to the alpine region of Gaspé County, Quebec. 
It is the plant described in 1813 by Wormskjold from Greenland as 
E. intermedium and in 1818 by Schrank from Labrador as E. pauci- 
