1921] Female! , — American Representatives of Scirpus eespitosus 25 



sheaths. Contrasted with the ubiquitous plant of acid peats is the 

 representative of the species on slaty or calcareous ledges and gravels 

 along the St. John and Aroostook Rivers in Maine. There the plant 

 of sweet or basic ledges and gravel is associated with such calcicolous 

 species as Scirpus Clintonii Gray, Equisctum variegatum Schleich., 

 Trisetum melicoidcs (Michx.) Vasey, Rynchospora capillacea Torr., 

 Carcx interior Bailey, Tofieldia glutinosa (Michx.) Pers., Viola neph- 

 rophylla Greene, Primula mistassinica Michx., etc., and although in 

 its spikelet, achene, bristles and short leaf-blade the plant suggests 

 S. eespitosus, var. callosus, it forms comparatively soft tussocks, 

 with almost filiform culms far less rigid than in var. callosus, and its 

 very closely crowded culms are subtended by submembranaceous or 

 scarious very narrow blackish or lead-colored scales. The same 

 extreme variant occurs on the slaty gravel of the Gander River in 

 Newfoundland, there associated with essentially the same species, 

 so that the plant seems to be a definite variety characteristic of such 

 habitats. As such it is here proposed as 



Scirpus cespitosus L., var. delicatulus, n. var., a var. calloso 

 recedit culmis filiformibus vix rigidis, vaginis imis nigrescentibus 

 vel griseis submembranaceis vel scariosis. — Newfoundland: gravelly 

 bank of Gander River, Glenwood, July 12 and 13, 1911, Fernald, 

 Wicgand & Darlington, no. 4760. Maine: abundant, wet gravelly 

 or ledgy bank of St. John River, Fort Kent, June 16, 1898, Fernald, 

 no. 2097 (type in herb. New Pmgland Botanical Club). St. Francis, 

 June 18, 1898, Fernald, no. 2098; ledgy bank of Aroostook River, 

 Masardis, September 8, 1897, Fernald; wet sandy shore of Aroostook 

 River, Fort Fairfield, July 5, 1893, Fernald, no. 121. 



Gray Herbarium. 



A Freak Sweet Clover. — Mr. B. W. Cooney, County Agricul- 

 turist, Goldendale, Washington, recently found and sent to Wash- 

 ington State College a "sample of sweet clover plant which has the 

 appearance of being a Sport." He discovered it at Glenwood in a 

 cultivated field of the plant, 45 acres in extent. The specimen shows 

 five feet of the top of a vigorous well branched plant. The leaves 

 are mostly withered and gone. The main and lateral branches bear 

 numerous inflorescences. The younger ones that are still in bud are 

 more densely puberulent than is usual in specimens of this species, 



