206 Rhodora [DECEMBER 
A SMOOTH-FRUITED FORM OF ASCLEPIAS SYRIACA. 
J. R. CHURCHILL. 
Our common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) is abundant in 
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, as elsewhere, growing in open 
fields and along the roads and streams everywhere. Ordinarily it 
is easily recognized in flower by its stout and simple stem and its 
many large umbels of fragrant purplish flowers, and later, in fruit, 
by the large pointed mostly curved or falcate pods, which are softly 
tomentose and all “echinate” with warts or “soft spinous processes.” 
The “echinate” pod is a diagnostic character by which this and 
a western species similar in this respect, are segregated in our 
manuals from the other species with smooth or unarmed pods. 
So, on September 14, 1918, while botanizing in that part of Lanes- 
boro, Massachusetts, called Berkshire, I was greatly interested to 
find growing in low open ground, with plants having the normal 
echinate fruit, a small colony of our Milkweed, bearing pods which 
were all straight, quite unarmed, and merely velvety. There was 
no vestige or rudiment of the spinous processes. Recourse to my 
herbarium also disclosed a plant, which I collected at Grafton, Massa- 
chusetts, Sept. 7, 1902, on which the two ripe pods were, like those from 
Berkshire, short, straight and quite smooth. Evidently I had noted 
and preserved the specimen, as often happens, for the very reason 
that, in the complete absence of the spinous processes, it conspicuously 
failed to conform to the echinate character ascribed to the fruit in 
this species. Nevertheless I had called it, “ A. Cornuti Decaisne,” the 
name by which this species was then known; and itself, curiously 
though unintentionally, suggestive of the “horns” which are normally 
present. 
The only reference which I have found to this aberrant form is in 
the Supplement to the Synoptical Flora of N. A. Vol. II, Part I, 
where (p. 401) is the following note by Dr. Gray:— “A. Cornutt 
Decaisne, p. 91.— A. grandiflora, Bertol. Misc. Bot. xii. 47, t. 3:44. 
raised from seed from North America, by its flowers and follicles 
can be no other than this common Milkweed. Pods in this species 
are sometimes found with hardly a trace of the soft spinous processes, 
