78 Rhodora [APRIL 
These differences between the plants, as well as the pronounced 
difference in the distribution of the European and the American Wood 
Sorrels indicate that DeCandolle and Zuccarini were correct in main- 
taining the American plant as a distinct species, and that Bigelow’s 
first impulse to separate the American plant was well grounded, 
although he afterward, from failing to observe the numerous concomi- 
tant characters, reduced his own s}.2cies. The Wood Sorrel of north- 
eastern America should, therefore, be known as Oxalis americana 
Bigelow. 
The typical Oxalis americana has the petals white, delicately lined 
with pink or crimson, rarely with the pink tinge nearly or quite absent. 
Occasionally colonies are found with the petals bright rose-purple, 
quite parallel with the European plants which have been called O. 
Acetosella, var. subpurpurescens DC. These plants, however, repre- 
sent merely a color form, which occurs more or less sporadically 
through the range of the typical form of the species, and they are best 
treated as forms rather than as varieties. The form with the rose- 
purple petals in America may be called 
OXALIS AMERICANA Bigelow, forma rhodantha, n. f., petalis pur- 
pureis. 
Petals purple— Marne: swamp, Chesterville, July 3, 1906, 
Agnes Chase & Lillian O. Eaton. New Hampsutre: Crawford 
Notch, C. E. Faxon (rype in Gray Herb.). Vermont: Garden of 
Eden, Eden, Lamoille Co., July 19, 1916, C. H. Knowlton; mountain- 
side, Manchester, 1892, A. J. Grout. 
Gray HERBARIUM. 
A VARIETY OF SMILAX GLAUCA. 
S: F. BuaKke. 
SoME years ago I became acquainted with the fact that Smilax 
glauca Walt., as generally understood, comprises two distinct forms 
— one a plant with leaves quite smooth or, under a lens, very obscurely 
papillose beneath, the other with the leaves prominently roughened 
beneath, either chiefly on the veins or densely over the whole surface, 
with short subglanduliform bluntish papillae, or even hirtellous-pul- 
