Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 21. May, 1919. No. 245. 
RUBUS IDAEUS AND SOME OF ITS VARIATIONS IN NORTH 
AMERICA. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
IN an attempt to organize the material of the common Red Rasp- 
berry in the Gray Herbarium the writer has found himself face to 
face with several different interpretations and with a plant of New 
England which does not appear to have been included in the seemingly 
sufficient “species” or “subspecies” of raspberry which have recently 
been proposed. In the first place, the distinguished Dr. Focke of 
Bremen, who has made a life-long study of Rubus and whose judgment 
of specific values in the genus should have great weight, treats Rubus 
idaeus in his Species Ruborum ' as a circumpolar species with numerous 
geographic subspecies and varieties. Somewhat earlier, the late E. L. 
Greene, taking up for the Red Raspberries as a separate genus the 
subgeneric name Batidaea of Dumortier, said of the common Ameri- 
can representative: 
"B. srRIGOSA. Rubus strigosus, Michx., the original from Canada; 
but, between the high Northeast and the mountain districts of the 
South, there occur several excellent subspecies to be distinguished. 
Those proposed below are western.” ? Then follow sixteen of th» 
subspecies of B. strigosa distinguished by Greene in the region from 
the Great Lakes westward. To be sure the subspecies are all given 
binomials, B. heterodoxa, B. amplissima, etc., like true species and at 
variance with the ordinarily recognized method of indicating sub- 
species; but in view of Greene’s insistence upon accurate English and 
1 Fock , Species Ruborum pars ii. 207-211: Biblioth. Bot. 72 ™ (1911). 
2 Greene, Leaflets, i. 238, 239 (1906). 
