160 Rhodora ie PENE 
thick. An inch or so below the rim of the bex, lengthwise on either 
side, was fixed a wooden ledge. The press, instead of being suspended 
from above, is supported on this ledge and is girded with a canvas 
skirt which hangs down well below the upper edge of the box. As a 
source of heat a small electric stove is used, the connecting cord of 
which passes out through one of several holes which have been bored 
in the sides of the box near the base. 
THE SPECIFIC VALIDITY OF LIMOSELLA SUBULATA. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
OnE of the most characteristic plants of tidal flats, brackish shores 
and borders of salt marshes in eastern North America is the little 
matted and creeping plant which is known in our floras as Limosella 
aquatica, var. tenuifolia, or sometimes as a distinct species, L. tenui- 
folia. Our plant, treated either as a variety of L. aquatica L. or as a 
species, L. tenuifolia Wolf, is thus inferred to be identical with the 
European L. tenuifolia. But so far as the writer is able to determine, 
Wolf’s species, L. tenuifolia, is merely a dwarfed form of the European 
L. aquatica, with the leaf-blade very short and linear instead of nar- 
rowly elliptic. This is the estimate of the European L. tenuifolia by 
essentially all European authors, including Hoffmann who originally 
published it not as a true species but as subordinate to L. aquatica; 
and it has been so regarded in Europe for nearly a century, Schiibler 
& Martens as early as 1834 calling it L. aquatica B. L. tenuifolia? a 
nomenclatorial combination which has been repeatedly published as 
new by different subsequent authors even down to the year 1909. 
Limosella aquatica L. is a characteristic European plant found also 
in southern Labrador and generally over the western portions of 
temperate North America, having leaves with definite blades varying 
from oblong to elliptic in the commoner form of the plant or narrowly 
oblanceolate to barely linear in the more reduced forms (var. tenuifolia). 
1 Wolf. ex Hoffm. Deutsch. Fl. ed. 2, i. part 2, 29 (1804). 
2 Schiibler & Martens, Fl. von Wiirtemb. 396 (1834). 
