24 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
trasted with the European, the shrub of eastern and arctic America 
has the horns considerably longer and more divergent or even some- 
what deflexed at base, but occasionally, as in Greenland material 
illustrated by Warming, they may be strongly ascending though 
much longer than the tubules. Reichenbach illustrates? the horns 
of the European shrub as equaling the tubules but such European 
specimens as the writer has been able to examine agree with those 
illustrated in the other European works above cited. 
The decision whether the shrub of arctic-alpine American range 
should be treated as a distinct species or as a variety is difficult to 
reach without a fuller knowledge of the old world shrub and the 
variability of the horns of its anthers but it is at least a well marked 
American variety, the first satisfactory name for which seems to be 
V. uliginosum, var. alpinum Bigelow. Bigelow first put forward 
the shrub of the alpine summits of New Hampshire as a species, V. 
gaultherioides*, buthe later considered it a variety of the European 
V. uliginosum. 
During the study of the American material of V. uliginosum it 
has become apparent that the shrub of western North America 
which was separated in 1876 as V. occidentale Gray? is strikingly like 
many European specimens and plates of V. uliginosum, especially 
the narrower-leaved extreme of the European shrub. The fruit is 
commonly slightly smaller than in most European plants but the 
short ascending horns of the anthers are quite like those of European 
specimens. V. occidentale seems, then, to be essentially V. uliginosum 
of Europe, and the broader-leaved shrub of Oregon, Washington 
and British Columbia, as well as of the Lake Superior region, is 
likewise a good match for the European shrub. 
The synonymy of var. alpinum is as follows:— 
V. ULIGINOSUM L., var. ALPINUM Bigel. Fl. Bost. ed. 2: 153 (1824). 
V. gaultherioides Bigel. N. E. Journ. Med. v. 335 (1816). V. pubescens 
Wormsk. in Hornem. Fl. Dan. ix. 2, t. 1516 (1818). V. salicinum 
Cham. Linnaea, i. 525 (1826). V. uliginosum, y mucronatum Herder, 
Pl. Radd. iv. 38 (1872); Gray, Syn. Fl. N. A. ii. pt. 1: 23 (1878). 
V. uliginosum, B. pubescens Lange, Consp. Fl. Grónl. 90 (1880) and 
! Warming, Meddelelser om. Grónland, xxvi.—Repr. as The Structure and Biology 
Jf Arctic Fl. Pl. i. fig. 31 (1908). 
? Reichenb. Ic. Fl. Germ. xvii. t. 1168, figs. iii, & iv. (1855). 
3 Bigelow, Fl. Bost. ed. 2: 153 (1824). 
* Bigelow, N. E. Journ. Med. v. 335 (1810). 
5 Gray, Bot. Cal. i. 451 (1876). 
