Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 21. June, 1919. No. 246. 
JASIONE MONTANA A CONSPICUOUS WEED 
NEAR LAKEWOOD, NEW JERSEY. 
BAYARD Lona. 
AMONG certain plants received for identification at the Philadelphia 
Academy during the winter of 1917 was a specimen of Jasione mon- 
tana, said to have been collected the previous summer near Lakewood, 
New Jersey, by Miss Florence Beckwith of the Rochester Academy 
of Science. 
This striking species is well known about Newport, Rhode Island, 
especially on Conanicut Island, but elsewhere, apparently (although 
recognized as occurring from Massachusetts to New York) it has been 
noted as a very unusual plant! The Lakewood specimen was received 
through Mr. O. H. Brown of Cape May City. Through his interest 
and the kindly response of Miss Beckwith it was learned that the 
plant had been found in a sandy field, sparsely covered with grass 
and weeds, along the River Road (leading toward Toms River) about 
two miles out from Lakewood. It was said to be not infrequent in 
this field but observed nowhere else. With the assurance that the 
1Tn fact, although there is an historical occurrence of it at Philadelphia, it has apparently 
never even been recorded from here. It was doubtless among the rarest „of ballast ground 
waifs, as the only extant material, to the best of my knowledge, is a single specimen at the 
University of Pennsylvania from “Girard Point (on ballast) Phila.," collected by Isaac Burk, 
probably about the 60's. The occurrence in New York is in all probability similarly historical 
rather than actual. Mr. Norman Taylor, in his Flora of the Vicinity of New York, notes it 
“Rare as a waif. . .near the City of New York," but Mr. Percy Wilson has recently written me 
from the New York Botanical Garden, on my inquiry, ‘‘We have only one specimen labelled 
Jasione montana in the local collection. This was collected in ballast grounds at Hunter's 
Point, New York, in 1879." In the authoritative Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns 
of Connecticut it is reported as rare in that state, two stations being noted, but is definitely 
placed in a carefully compiled list of Fugitive Species. Probably as little may be said for its 
occurrence in Massachusetts. 
