D 
1914] Fernald,— The alpine Bearberries 23 
type, Wilson no. 4025 from western Szech'uan in China, and two of 
Rehder's collection from near Banff and near Laggan, Alberta; but 
three of the above references to red berries in America (including 
Macoun's note on the Anticosti shrub) are given and the conclusion 
drawn that, *It seems to be the common form of western North 
America” and “The plant of eastern North America has bluish black 
fruit like that of Europe." The record from Anticosti clearly indi- 
cates, however, that the shrub is not strictly of “western North 
America" but occurs also near the easternmost margin of the conti- 
nent; and in studying the plant as a member of the flora of eastern 
America the writer has found that, besides the characters indicated 
by Rehder & Wilson, the scarlet-berried shrub has several others 
which are of greater import and mark it as a well-defined second spe- 
cies of the section Arctous, a group of Arctostaphylos heretofore con- 
sidered monotypic. 
Briefly, the differences between Arctostaphylos alpina and the scarlet- 
berried plant are as follows. In A. alpina the persistent inner scales 
of the winter-buds are obovate and rounded at summit; in the scarlet- 
berried plant ovate or lanceolate and acuminate: in A. alpina the 
leaves are very rugose, subcoriaceous and marcescent, their margins, 
especially toward the base and on the petioles, ciliate with stiff bristles 
1-2 mm. long; in the other shrub the leaves are less rugose, thinner, 
and more or less definitely deciduous, their margins without definite 
cilia, the usually longer petioles glabrous or at most minutely pilose- 
ciliolate at base: in the black-berried plant the seeds are 2.7-4.6 mm. 
long, 2-3.6 mm. wide; in the red 2.5-3 mm. long, 1.6-2.2 mm. wide: 
the black-fruited shrub is, in America at least, primarily if not always 
a shrub of acid or noncalcareous rocks; the red-fruited both with us 
as well as in China a plant of limestones. 
That Arctostaphylos alpina in eastern America is a shrub of acid 
or noncaleareous habitats is well-known to those whose explorations 
have extended from New England to Labrador. The specimens and 
records of exact stations in eastern America, west of Greenland, make 
this apparent: Cape Prince of Wales, Hudson Straits, “where the 
rocks were found to be chiefly coarse, red granitite-gneiss";! Cape 
Chidley or Chudleigh, where * the rock everywhere consists of ordinary 
varieties of gneiss”; Nachvak, Labrador, where the “mountains.... 
1 Low, Geol. Surv. Can., Ann. Rep. n. s. xi. 372 (1899). 
2 R. Bell, Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv. Can. Rep. of Progr. for 1882—84, 18 DD (1885). 
