1918] Fernald,— Validity of Limosella subulata 163 
has the corolla white or at most with a bluish tinge on the outside. 
The calyx of the European plant is uniformly described and illustrated 
as regular; but in the plant of eastern America the calyx, although 
sometimes nearly regular, usually has the lobes somewhat united in 
twos, a character pointed out by Dr. Ives in his original description of 
L. subulata, when he laid much emphasis upon this point. The material 
of L. aquatica from western America agrees with the European in its 
very regular calyx and the descriptions of the plant of western America 
state that the corollas are usually pink. In L. subulata the scapes 
are very quickly recurved, so that the fruiting plants form a close 
tangle of arching and interlocking scapes. In the European species 
this arching is much less conspicuous, as it is in the material of L. 
aquatica in western America, where many of the scapes stay quite 
straight and erect until maturity, although some arching is found 
in L. aquatica. The style of L. subulata is more slender and delicate 
and usually more curved than in L. aquatica, in which the style is 
straight and comparatively short, although the difference is a minute 
one and better seen by comparison than indicated by measurement. 
In the capsule of L. aquatica the margins of the valves are thickened 
so that the dehisced valves appear to have a “wire-edge,”’ but in L. 
subulata the edges of the valves are without this thickening, being 
thin and often more or less involute in the old capsules. Attempts 
have been made to find stable characters in the seeds but thus far 
these have failed, although there are occasional specimens which show 
recognizable differences; but in view of the very different habit of 
L. subulata and its uniformly saline or brackish habitat, its strictly 
bladeless leaves, its white corollas, its usually irregular calyx and the 
thin-edged valves of its capsules, it would seem that L. subulata 
should be recognized as a valid species of the brackish and saline 
shores from Newfoundland and the lower St. Lawrence to the lower 
Delaware River. 
The only material of L. aquatica yet known from eastern America 
is from the southeastern corner of the Labrador peninsula, where it 
was collected in 1882 by the late John A. Allen and more recently 
(in 1915) by Dr. St. John on sandy pond shores, just within the 
Straits of Belle Isle. The material is immature in both instances 
but presents no characters which seem to separate it from the common 
L. aquatica of Europe and of western America, but it is noteworthy 
that this plant of fresh sands and pond-shores is not found generally 
