166 Rhodora [SEPTEMBER 
LYCOPODIUM SABINAEFOLIUM AND L. SITCHENSE. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
LYCOPODIUM SABINAEFOLIUM Willd., var. sitchense (Rupr.), n. 
comb. L. sitchense Rupr. Beitr. Z. Pflanzenk. Russ. Reich. iii. 30 
(1845). 
When L. sitchense was first taken up! by recent American students 
as a species distinct from L. sabinaefolium comparatively little material 
was at hand, only 24 collections of the two being cited. Subsequently 
extensive field work has made these plants better known and the 
writer now has before him 121 sheets of the two; but with the accumu- 
lation of such a series of specimens, one third of the number collected 
by himself, he has gradually found the lines of demarcation between 
the two growing more and more obscure. In their extremes they 
are fairly marked, typical L. sabinaefolium having somewhat dorsi- 
ventral branchlets with the leaves 4-ranked and the free tips of the 
leaves usually shorter than the decurrent base; typical L. sitchense 
having essentially terete branchlets with the leaves 5-ranked and 
their free tips usually longer than the decurrent base. Too often, 
however, it is almost if not quite impossible to say into which series 
a given collection should be placed, the condition thus being com- 
parable with that presented by L. obscurum L. and its var. dendroi- 
deum (Michx.) D. C. Eaton. 
When they had only a few specimens Lloyd & Underwood were 
able to define L. sitchense as having “peduncles short (less than 1 
cm.)” and L. sabinaefolium with “ peduncles (1-5 cm. long . . .)." 
But 14 sheets,? which in foliage are typical L. sitchense, show slender 
peduncles 1.2-3 cm. long; while 7 sheets? with the dorsiventral branch- 
lets of true L. sabinaefolium have some or all of the strobiles essentially 
sessile. It is a striking fact, but exactly what one would expect, 
that the plants of the more exposed habitats have the shortest ped- 
! Lloyd & Underwood, Bull. Torr. Bot. Cl. xxvii. 162 (1900). 
2 Such, for instance, as: dry spruce woods, St. Jean l'Evangéliste, Nouvelle, 
Que., Collins & Fernald; dry sunny barren near Jersey Cove, Cape Breton, Nichols, 
no. 1416; Stevens Mt., Fort Kent, Maine, Williams; bank of Fish River, Fort Kent, 
Maine, Churchill; pasture, Lombard Hill, Colebrook, New Hampshire, Pease, no. 
16,947; base of Pine Mt., Gorham, New Hampshire, Pease, no. 17,925; top of Wil- 
loughby Mt., Vermont, Cheever. 
è Such, for instance, as: granite ledges, summit of Hodge's Hill, Newfoundland, 
Fernald, Wiegand & Bartram, no. 4389; terrains secs, Petit-Saguenay, Quebec, 
Victorin, no. 9331; subalpine wooded meadows, Table-top Mt., Quebec, Fernald & 
Collins, no. 153; dry clearings, Alberton, Prince Edward Island, Fernald & St. John, 
no. 6705. 
