154 Rhodora [July 



foundland B. iodandra, on the other hand, the plant is purple-tinged 

 and bears a simple or subsimple raceme with elongate pedicels; the 

 blunt leaves are oblong or ovate and fleshy; the calyx is cleft only 

 two-thirds or three-fourths to the base into herbaceous, oblong or ovate 

 loins; the corolla is decidedly petaloid and its white or purplish 

 lobes much longer than in B. jmniculata, and the anthers are usually 

 purple. Unfortunately, however, wherever in Nova Scotia we 

 found the typical southern B. panicvlata, it was usually, if not always, 

 associated with a coarser plant with simpler inflorescences, purplish 

 color, larger corolla and purple anthers, in these characters closely 

 approaching B. iodandra of Newfoundland. In Nova Scotia the 

 two plants so freely intergrade that it is most difficult to draw a 

 sharp line between them. The trouble is not a new one. In 1894 

 the late Dr. Geo. G. Kennedy and Mr. Emile F. Williams found an 

 intermediate plant in a sphagnous swamp in Norfolk County, Massa- 

 chusetts, and in 1900 Williams published 1 an account of it and an 

 illustration as B. iodandra; and Bicknell, finding the same inter- 

 mediate plant on Nantucket, took it in 1915 to be unquestionably 

 B. iodandra, but stated that "It is found also on Martha's Vineyard 

 and apparently, also, on Long Island, not .always, however, perfectly 

 maintaining the characters of its typical form, and certain rather 

 dubious examples undoubtedly raise the question whether it may 

 not be intergradient with Barionia panicidata." 2 Subsequently, 

 partly in response to an argument for which I am responsible, Bick- 

 nell has dropped 3 B. iodandra from his Nantucket list; but our 

 extensive collections from Nova Scotia and a prolonged but unsuccess- 

 ful endeavor to find true specific characters for B. iodandra convince 

 me that both he and Williams originally hit very near the truth. 

 On its constantly less deeply cleft calyx and its larger corolla B. 

 iodandra can be maintained as a Newfoundland variety of B. pani- 

 nilafa, while the intermediate plant of Nova Scotia at least is best 

 treated as a transitional variety. 



But, to return to the barren at Lower Argyle. The slightly ele- 

 vated, bushy knolls in the barren were often covered by a dwarfed 

 and contorted form of the coastal plain Thclyptcris simidata, already 



i Williams, Rhodoha, ii. 55, t. 15, flg. 5 (1900). 

 'Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Bot. CI. xlii. 33 (1915). 

 'Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Bot. CI. xlvi. 423 (1919). 



