1922] Fernald,—Notes on the Flora of Nova Scotia 201 
broadest 2.5-6 (7) mm. wide; sheaths with erose-scabrous angles; 
‘bracts usually exceeding the culm; upper spikes often aggregated ; 
staminate spike not large, often partially hidden by the pistillate, 
the latter 10-30 mm. long, alternately to rather densely flowered; 
the rhachis smooth; scales often tinged with color, subtruncate to 
acute, usually mucronate, rarely muticous or even retuse; perigynia 
ellipsoidal, 2.5-4.0, mostly 3.0-3.7 mm. long, slenderly substipitate 
thin and fragile walled, apex acute, often slightly beak-like, straight 
or slightly oblique, nerves obscure, 15-21; anthers 1.3-2.3 mm. long 
when dry, 1.7-2.5 mm. long when fresh.—Low woods in mucky or 
peaty soil, rarely in drier places: Labrador to Connecticut and in 
the mountains to North Carolina and Tennessee, westward through 
Ontario and New York to Minnesota and probably to Manitoba. 
This species was not recognized by Dewey and Boott, and probably 
was treated by each of these authors under more than one name. 
The type of Bailey's C. laxiflora var. varians must be considered to 
be that one to which he referred in his original description, namely, 
the specimen on which his cited synonym, “C. laxiflora var. nter- 
media Bailey, Bull. 3. Minn. Nat. Hist. & Geol. Surv. 22, 1887, not 
Boott" was based. This specimen now in the Bailey herbarium is 
C. leptonervia. Of the specimens in the Bailey herbarium at the 
time the treatment in Gray's Man. ed. 6 was written, and labelled 
C. laxiflora var. varians, five are C. leptonervia, one is C. ormostachya 
and two are C. blanda. There is therefore no doubt that C. laxiflora 
var. varians should be considered synonymous with C. leptonervia. 
The writer cannot follow Mackenzie in reducing C. leptonervia to 
C. anceps, as it appears to have no close affinity with that plant, and 
to be as distinct as any of the species here treated. Besides the 
difference given in the key the leaves, when fresh, are greener and more 
plicate than in C. anceps and more like those of C. laxiflora and C. 
blanda. In central New York C. leptonervia commonly inhabits the 
: peaty or mucky soils on the borders of swamps. 
CORNELL University, Ithaca, New York. 
NOTES ON THE FLORA OF WESTERN NOVA SCOTIA 
1921. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
(Continued from page 181.) 
Cuscuta Gronovir Willd. C. vulgyvaga Engelm. Am. Journ. 
Sci. xliii. 338 (1842). C. Gronovii 3 vulgivaga Engelm. Trans. Acad. 
Sci. St. Louis i. 508 (1859); Yuncker. Revis. N. A. and W. I. Cuscuta, 
