1921 J Fernald, — Expedition to Nova Scotia 149 



here in greatest profusion and forming in the wettest hollows an al- 

 most eor tinuous carpet. In collecting sods of this northern represent- 

 ative of an austral genus we constantly found our hands filled with 

 loose needle-like flowering and fruiting scapes, for in this species, it 

 appeared, the scapes are unique in freely disarticulating at the very 

 base, all our other species of Xyris firmly holding their fruiting scape 

 through the winter. At the western border of the barren we noticed 

 a particularly wet quagmire and, although we had only a few minutes 

 to train-time, we were so strongly tempted to take a peep that we 

 venturec. into the slough, — Schizaca everywhere, here in the wettest 

 of moss- and liverwort-carpets, two Bartonias, one of them suggest- 

 ing the Newfoundland B. iodandra, the other obviously neither 

 that nor B. virginica of the drier barren, and Arethusa bulbosa abun- 

 dantly fruiting. Here was a case of the luck we all have experienced, 

 — the discovery of a choice spot on the way home — but there was 

 nothing to do but to make mental note of it as a place which needed 

 further exploration. 



A few miles to the north, about Argyle Head, Long and Linder had 

 also beei collecting Bartonias and Xyris montana, but their other 

 specialties were different from ours: Junciis subcaudatus, J. margin- 

 atum, Eleocharis rostellaia, Polygonum robustius and the tree-climbing 

 Polypodmm again; and some good things we had not previously had, 

 Woodwardia arcolata and Rhcxia virginica on the bushy shore of 

 Randel .^ake, the Woodwardia not heretofore definitely known east 

 of southern New Hampshire, Hypericum dissimulatum } described by 

 Bicknell from York County, Maine, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, 

 Long Island and southward, Rynchospora capitellata, var. discuticns- 

 (Clarke) Blake, 2 which Long and I had found the preceding year on 

 Cape Cod but otherwise unknown except in North Carolina and as 

 a member of the famous, isolated coastal plain flora of northern 

 Indiana, the southern Eleocharis Robbinsii, and, in good fruit, Pota- 

 mogcton eonfervoidzs and, to add a northern flavor, Euphrasia cana- 

 densis Townsend, 5 a characteristic species occurring from the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence to the foothills of the White Mountains. 



On August 6, White followed the too prevalent fashion and returned 

 home, leaving Long, Linder and me to carry on the work. On the 



i Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Bot. CI., xl. 610 (1913). 



-Blake, Rhodora, >:x. 28 (1918). 



5 See Fernald & Wiegand, Rhodora, xvii. 195 (1915). 



