118 Rhodora IMay 



PANAX 



P. trifolium L. Rich moist woods, frequent throughout. 

 C. H. Knowlton I Committee on 

 Walter Deane f Local Flora. 



A Form of Ilex opaca. — That the North American holly {Ilex 

 opaea) sometimes occurs in a form with entire or nearly entire leaves 

 has long been known and occasionally commented upon. No one, 

 however, appears to have given this form even a horticultural name. 

 This is perhaps partly because our species has been much less cul- 

 tivated than the European /. Aqnifolium and its variants are cor- 

 respondingly less well known; and partly because of an apparently 

 prevailing impression that the entire leaves occur mainly on the upper 

 branches of otherwise typical trees. 1 Similar statements have been 

 made in regard to the European holly and have given rise to a pretty 

 theory that leaves within reach of grazing cattle bear spines, but 

 that when they attain a safe altitude they divest themselves of this 

 unfriendly armament. 



Dr. L. C. Jones, of Falmouth, Mass., has recently been investi- 

 gating the form of our holly with sub-entire leaves, as it occurs in 

 his region, and has kindly communicated notes and specimens to 

 the Gray Herbarium. He finds that in two well-grown and mature 

 trees (15-20 feet tall and 3-4 inches in diameter at the base) which 

 he observed among some thirty individuals of the ordinary type, 

 the foliage is of uniform character throughout. Some of the leaves 

 are quite entire, others have a very few, irregularly scattered spiny 

 teeth; 2 both kinds grow together on the same branches in all parts 

 of the tree. Dr. Jones notes further that "the leaves of these two 

 trees appeared thicker and more opaque than those on the trees of 

 the common variety and the effect in the mass was to give them a 

 duller and darker shade of green, as if a little black or dark brown 

 had been stirred into the pigment." 



Examination of fruiting specimens of the Massachusetts plants 

 and of like flowering ones from the South discloses no distinctive 

 characters other than those of the leaves. Entire-leaved forms of 



i See Sargent, Sylva N. Am. i. 107, and Mellichamp, Bull. Torr. Bot. Club viii. 

 112, whom Sargent quotes. 



* The usual form has 3-7 spiny teeth rather regularly disposed on each side of 

 the leaf. 



