130 Rhodora [ittrn 



THE GRAY HERBARIUM EXPEDITION TO NOVA SCOTIA, 



1920. 



M. L. Eernald. 



(Continued from p. 111.) 



We were due in Halifax in the early evening and had counted on 

 seeing the country all the way, hut the chronic indisposition which 

 seemed to afflict the government railroad reached its climax for the 

 day in a rocky barren west of Bridgewater, with the result that we 

 were many miles west of Halifax when darkness set it. During 

 the very long and tedious stop in the rock-barren we had more to 

 occupy our attention than did the hundred other travellers who had 

 soon gathered all the early blueberries and lingering strawberries; 

 and, although we should not recommend this area as the best place 

 for the next breakdown, we took away the southern Carer vmbellata, 

 var. toiim and C. pennsylvanica, var. lucorum, Lyeopodium tristaeh- 

 yum, Leckea intermedia, and one of the neatest little shad bushes we 

 ever saw, a beautiful shrub with stoloniferous habit, low stature 

 (3-0 dm.) and nearly orbicular dark-green, highly lustrous leaves. 

 Afterward, at Grand Lake, Halifax County, at Springhill Junction in 

 Colchester County, at Middleton in Annapolis County and at various 

 places westward we found it a thoroughly distinct and dominant 

 shrub of barrens, either dry or wet. In habit it resembles A. stoloni- 

 fera Wiegand, 1 a characteristic shrub from Maine to Virginia and 

 in eastern Newfoundland, with dull and pale-green or glaucous foliage 

 and with the summit of the ovary densely tomentose; but this char- 

 acteristic Nova Scotian shrub with dark, glossy leaves has the 

 summit of the ovary wholly glabrous, though it is sometimes arach- 

 noid or sparsely pubescent. Typical A. sfolonifera we found in Nova 

 Scotia, though only once; but the common shrub is so well marked 

 that it should be separated as a variety. 



After a night in Halifax, where none of us got more than a few 

 "cat naps," so insistent and obtrusive was the clang of the near-by 

 fog bell, we were routed out soon after daylight to catch the "Ocean 

 Limited" north; Bissell, Bean, White and Linder leaving the train 

 at Truro, Long and Pease at Springhill Junction to explore barrens 

 characterized by a scattered growth of Pintu Banhiana and P. 



1 Wiegand, Rhodora. xiv. 144 (1912). 



