210 Rhodora [OcroBER 
The Oregon specimens agree perfectly with the excellent description 
given by Mr. Long. It is interesting to note that Linnaeus originally 
placed this and the other species of Muscari in Hyacinthus; and it 
remained for Philip Miller to point out that the shape of the corolla 
in this group showed so marked a deviation from the funnel- or 
bell-shaped corolla of Hyacinthus proper as to justify a generic 
segregation. 
Boissier in the Flora Orientalis 5: 291 (1884), gives the native 
range of M. comosum as from Greece and Thrace to Transcaucasia, 
Asia Minor, Cyprus and Mesopotamia, westward over all of central 
and southern Europe to Belgium, and into northern Africa. All 
these Mediterranean weeds seem to find the climate and soil of 
Oregon peculiarly congenial, and each season marks the appearance 
of immigrants previously unknown. 
SALEM, OREGON. 
THE AMERICAN VARIATIONS OF LINNAEA BOREALIS. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
For many years the Twinflower of northeastern America passed 
unquestioned as identical with the European Linnaea borealis L., 
and after it was separated in 1825 as L. americana Forbes, it was not 
generally treated as even varietally distinguishable from the European 
until it was revived as a species by Britton! in 1901 and as var. ameri- 
cana (Forbes) Rehder, Ruopora, vi. 56 (1904). In all recent treat- 
ments which I have examined it seems to be implied that the typical 
L. borealis does not occur in America and that our plants all belong to 
the broadly distributed var. americana and the more restricted var. 
longiflora Torr. of the Pacific slope, or to a reputed Alaskan species, 
L. serpyllifolia Rydberg, Journ. N. Y. Bot. Gard. viii. 135 (1907). 
Much of the material from western Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, 
however, the plant called by Rydberg L. serpyllifolia, is quite like 
typical European L. borealis. The western var. longiflora, similarly, 
does not seem to be clearly interpreted. Sometimes, as by Rydberg,? 
it has been treated as a species; sometimes, as by Piper,’ it has been 
united without attempt at differentiation with the widely dispersed 
! Britton, Man. 873 (1901). 
? Rydb. Fl. Rocky Mts. 812 (1917). 
3 Piper, Fl. Wash. 528 (1906). 
