48 Rhodora [Marcu 
AN EPILOBIUM UNDER ESTUARINE CONDITIONS. 
Norman C. FASSETT. 
Tue distinguishing characteristic of the tribe Epilobiae of the Ona- 
graceae is the tuft of hair, or coma, on the seeds, but the writer finds 
in a collection made during the summer of 1923 by Mr. H. K. Svenson 
and himself a plant which exactly matches Epilobium glandulosum 
Lehm., var. adenocaulon (Haussk.) Fernald! in every character except 
that the seeds have no suggestion of a coma. This plant was collected 
on the tidal flats of the St. Lawrence River at St. Vallier, some twenty 
miles below the city of Quebec, and examination of the specimens 
in the Gray Herbarium shows that the same form was collected a 
year earlier by Professors M. L. Fernald and A. S. Pease at Berthier, 
ten miles below St. Vallier. 
According to Hildebrand,” who investigated E. hirsutum, the coma 
is formed while the flower is still in bud, long before fertilization has 
taken place. But in this form from the shores of the St. Lawrence 
there is no trace of a coma at any stage, either before or after the bud 
has opened, so we may not consider that the coma is lost, but that it 
does not develop at all, and that this is perhaps a reversion to an earlier 
type. 
Ordinary plants of wet habitats take on strange forms and often 
undergo reversions when they become well established upon estuaries, 
as, for example, Leersia oryzoides (L.) Sw., forma glabra A. A. Eaton,’ 
of the tidal flats of the Merrimac and Kennebec Rivers, which has 
not only lost its scabrosity, but has become cleistogamous, and Sium 
suave Walt., forma fasciculatum Fassett, of the Kennebec River 
estuary, which is prostrate, rooting at the nodes, with fascicles of 
simple leaves which are of the same form as those of the seedlings of 
the normal plant. It is possible that the plant under discussion has 
adapted itself to estuary conditions, where the seeds may be carried 
off by the rising water; that is, a normally wind-disseminated plant 
has become water-disseminated. 
EPILOBIUM GLANDULOSUM Lehm., var. ecomosum, var. nova, 
varietatem adenocaulon simulans, sed seminibus comam carentibus. 
! Ruopona, xx. 35 (1918). 
? Bot. Zeit. xxx. 235 (1872). 
3 Ruopora, v. 118 (1903). 
4Ruopora, xxiii, 111 (1921). 
