108 Rhodora [Jony 
Nantucket,! Pennell collected it on Martha's Vineyard (No. 3486, 
distributed as “ Potamogeton foliosus Raf. ?”), Fernald and Long got 
it on Block Island, Charles Wright had material which he left (now 
in herb. N. E. Bot. Cl.) marked simply “Connecticut,” and St. 
John collected it in Suffolk Co., Long Island (no. 2541, distributed 
as N. flexilis). West of the Alleghenies it extends northward to the 
Great Lakes whence it follows eastward to Jefferson Co., New York 
(Fernald, Wiegand & Eames, no. 14,116) and in the St. Lawrence to 
Chambly Co., Quebec, (Victorin, nos. 8164, 11,347); and farther west 
it reaches Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon. Nearly if not quite 
all the material from the southern states and Mexico which has passed 
as N. flexilis is apparently N. guadalupensis, which is readily dis- 
tinguished in either pistillate flower or fruit, the style of N. flexilis 
being filiform and (including the stigmas) 0.8-2 mm. long, the stouter 
style (and stigmas) of N. guadalupensis only 0.1-0.6 mm. long. The 
seed of N. flexilis is highly lustrous and obscurely marked (under 
high power) with 30-40 rows of more or less hexagonal reticulations, 
that of N. guadalupensis is opaque and clearly marked with 15-18 
rows of mostly rectangular areolae. 
'The plant of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence here referred 
to N. guadalupensis has long been'a source of perplexity. Obviously 
not referable to N. flexilis on account of its wiry and somewhat 
turgid quality and the flat leaves, the plant has been specially puzzling 
because no one who has collected it—at Wolf Lake, Indiana, and in 
bays of Lake Erie as well as in the St. Lawrence near Longueuil—has 
secured fruit. In August, 1922, the plant was found by Fernald, 
Wiegand and Eames in comparatively deep water of Chaumont Bay, 
an arm of Lake Ontario in Jefferson Co., New York. "There the 
puzzling plant contrasted sharply with N. flexilis in its stiff and 
diffusely bushy or broom-like aspect, its almost wiry stems and 
branches, and its short and flat rather fleshy leaves, and in a deep 
purple color which suffused the whole plant. Many sheets of speci- 
mens were collected, but in the whole series only a few very scattered 
fruits occur. These, however, are so exactly like those of character- 
istic specimens from subtropical and tropical America that there is 
no further question regarding the identity of the plant. 
The scarcity of fruit on N. guadalupensis in the St. Lawrence 
basin is doubtless due to the fact that this essentially tropical species 
1 Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Bot. Cl. xxxv. 60 (1908). 
