40 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
GENTIANA LINEARIS, VAR. LATIFOLIA IN MAINE.—In September, 
1922, two or three tall stalks of a plant which I immediately saw to 
be an unfamiliar gentian were brought to me out of the woods. There 
had already been killing frosts, and the flowers were brown and 
withered, but they could be referred only to Gentiana linearis, var. 
latifolia, as described in the latest edition of Gray’s Manual. Last 
year (1923) I visited both in August and in September the locality 
in the town of Norridgewock from which the plants had come. It 
is on a farm remote from the highway, and the plants were found 
along the edge of extended woods, upon a strip of land which had 
been cleared and had grown up with numerous young elms, some of 
them a dozen or fifteen feet high, together with a scattering of gray 
birch and scrub willows. The ground was covered with close-set 
rounded stones, well sodded and overgrown with grasses and old 
field plants, principally asters, solidagos and Joe-Pye weed. The 
gentians were growing in loose groups of four to a dozen each, 
generally underneath and quite near a tree, or beside an old fence. 
They stood high, a good part of them from two to three feet, and 
each stalk bore a large cluster of rather dull blue flowers, already on 
September 14 a little passed. They extended over quite a space, 
and were abundant enough so that the twenty or more I gathered 
made slight impression. I discovered a couple of months later that 
each flower-cluster had harbored a larva, which had worked in the 
press and eaten out the heart of the cluster. Prof. M. L. Fernald 
of the Gray Herbarium informs me that this is the first time this 
gentian has been reported from New England, although it or a simi- 
lar form has been found in New Brunswick and on Lake Superior.— 
Louise HELEN Cosurn, Skowhegan, Maine. 
Vol. 26, no. 301, including pages 1 to 24, was issued 26 February, 1924. 
