1920] | Weatherby,—A European Primrose in New England 143 
A EunoPEAN Primrose IN New ENGLAND.—I had some trouble 
in believing my eyes when, in May, 1917, I ran across a colony of 
Primula officinalis (the English cowslip) very much at home on a 
shaded river-bank in Salisbury, Conn. There were forty or fifty 
plants within a fifty-foot square, perhaps a dozen of them in bloom, 
the others small and appearing like seedlings from their larger and 
more vigorous neighbors. The colony was visited again in 1918, and 
found to be flourishing, having increased somewhat both in number 
of plants and area covered. Last summer Mr. C. C. Hanmer showed 
me specimens of the same species collected by him in the township of 
Greene, Maine, where two or three small patches had been discovered 
along a rivulet in a meadow by Miss Mutty of Lewiston. 
P. officinalis Jacq. (or P. veris L., according to one's interpreta- 
tion of the Linnaean treatment) is a common and wide-spead Eurasian 
species, sometimes grown in gardens here. It is reported to set seed 
freely in cultivation. "The Salisbury station is near a spot where a 
steep bank between road and river offers to inhabitants of nearby 
houses an inviting opportunity to get rid of rubbish. Debris from 
gardens or earth from flower pots, thrown down here and containing 
Primula seeds may account for its presence. 
A search in the literature at hand has failed to disclose any previous 
record of Primula officinalis as spontaneous in the eastern United 
States. In his Catalogue of Canadian Plants, however, Professor 
John Macoun says of it: “‘ Well established in meadows about a mile 
inland from North Sydney, Cape Breton; also in meadows at Vic- 
toria, Vancouver Island."—€C. A. WEATHERBY, East Hartford, Conn. 
OXALIS MONTANA.—In 1918 I pointed out! several characters by 
which the northern Wood Sorrel of eastern America differs from the 
Old World O. Acetosella L. and took up for the American plant the 
name O. americana Bigelow (1824). But unfortunately I overlooked, 
às others have done, the fact that the American plant had been 
properly named in 1818 by Rafinesque. In his review of Pursh's 
Flora Americae Septentrionalis Rafinesque said: “ Oxalis acetosella, P. 
is in the same predicament [different from the European species], 
1 Fernald, Ruopona, xx. 76-78 (1918). 
