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Variation in the Leaves of Clematis Reticulata and Other Notes. 
By CHARLES Mone. 
(Plate CXX XIII). 
In Southern Alabama and on the eastern border of Central 
Mississippi, specimens of a Clematis have been collected, which 
in form and size of their leaves presented a habit so widely dif- 
fering from the forms of Clematis reticulata, known to me at the 
time, from Florida and Texas, that I could not convince myself 
of the identity of the plants from the eastern Gulf region with that 
species. After having had, by the kindness of Dr. Geo. Vasey, 
opportunity for comparing them with the series of forms in the 
National Herbarium from the Southern Atlantic States and from 
Texas, all doubts on this point were dispelled. The variation in 
the size of the pinnate leaves, in the number of pinnz, the size 
and shape of their leaflets exhibited by these plants from different 
localities, is very remarkable and of interest by their manifest 
connection with their geographical distribution. 
The specimens from South Carolina and Georgia exhibit the 
most meager foliage, the leaves of a few pinna with the leaflets 
lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate and acute (Fig. 1 and 2). In the 
plants from Eastern Florida, the leaflets became more expanded, 
ovate forms and prevailing considerably longer than wide, more 
or less blunt with the tendency to palmate or digitate division, 
(Fig. 3 and 4), the simple leaves supporting the flower stalk re- 
maining lanceolate and acute (Fig. 5). The plants from the 
eastern Gulf region show the greatest luxuriance in their foliage, 
the large leaves with from three to four and more pinnz, bear- 
ing roundish to broadly ovate leaflets, but little longer than wide, 
blunt or emarginate and often slightly cordate at the base (Fig. 
6and 7), the opposite simple leaves subtending the pedicels, ovate 
and obtuse (Fig. 8 and 9). The specimens from Eastern Texas 
present a foliage somewhat intermediate between the latter and 
the Florida plants (Fig. 11 to 12), 
These variations in the leaf form are easily explained when the 
difference in the moisture conditions are considered, prevailing 
in distant localities during the period of most active growth. 
Sparsely-leaved forms, with more narrow and acute leaflets, to all 
appearances predominate in the Southern Atlantic region, with a 
