M. 
i" 
60 Rhodora [APRIL 
narrowly elliptic, mostly obtuse, 8-10 mm. long, 2-4 mm. wide.— 
MAGDALEN Is_anps: damp brackish sandy beach, Grande Entrée, 
Coffin Island, August 19, 1912, Fernald, Long & St. John, no. 8165 
(TYPE in Gray Herb.). Fig. 4. 
Var. contiguus, n. var., humilis 2-13 cm. altus; foliis spathulatis 
apice rotundatis vel obtusis: bracteis exterioribus 5-11 lineari-ob- 
longis haud vel rare elongatis acutis vel acutiusculis 5-10 mm. longis 
1-2 mm. latis. 
Low, 2-13 cm. high: leaves spatulate, rounded or obtuse at apex: 
outer bracts 8-11, linear-oblong, not at all or rarely elongated, acute 
or acutish, 5-10 mm. long, 1-2 mm. wide.— New Brunswick: drier 
spots in marsh, Tracadie, Gloucester Co., September 10, 1913, S. 
F. Blake, no. 5645 (TYPE in Gray Herb.). Fig. 5. 
In its rayless marginal flowers (fig..2) Aster laurentianus is nearest 
related to A. angustus, which has the linear-attenuate leaves and the 
very slender involucral bracts ciliate. Though formerly confused 
with 4. frondosus, A. laurentianus has less affinity with that species 
than with A. angustus. In A. frondosus the ligule is well developed _ 
and the involucre has its outer serles of bracts successively shorter 
than the inner, while in the rayless A. laurentianus the outer series are 
successively longer. 
~ Aster laurentianus belongs to a peculiar little group of annual 
species (& Conyzopsis) widely dispersed in saline or subsaline habitats 
and somewhat transitional in their floral structure between true Aster 
and the genus Conyza. By some authors the section Conyzopsis is 
kept apart generically (as it once was by Asa Gray) from Aster as 
Brachyactis, characterized as a group of annuals with "rays not ex- 
ceeding the mature pappus or none" ;? but, as long ago pointed out 
by Asa Gray, the annual A. eubülgiur (generally maintained as an 
Aster, not a Brachyactis) " with its inconspicuous rays, hardly sur- 
passing the disk and commonly surpassed by the mature pappus, and 
with its fewer disk-flowers, must be held to invalidate the genus 
Brachyactis.” * The distinctness of Brachyactis as a genus is further 
menaced by the publication of such species as B. hybrida Greene, a 
plant said by its author to be “remarkable as a Brachyactis for its 
many long rays [about 1 cm. long], as well as by its apparently 
perennial duration; otherwise it is at perfect agreement with other 
members of this well marked genus." 4 
1 See Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xvi. 99 (1880). 
? Britton in Britton & Brown, Ill. Fl. ed. 2, iii. 348 (1913). 
3 Gray, 1. c. 
+ Greene, Leaflets, i. 147 (1905). 
