1914] Fernald and Wiegand,— The Genus Ruppia 121 
Oregon by Mr. Howell. Forms with fruit nearly destitute of peduncles 
and pedicels, and broad strongly marked sheaths, similar in these re- 
spects to R. brachypus, Gay, occur at Wood's Hole, Mass., and at other 
places along the Atlantie coast."! In the later monograph of the 
group, by Mr. Norman Taylor,’ the American R. maritima is made to 
have " flowers on a short pedicel which elongates after anthesis, and is 
ultimately a loosely coiled spiral," the fruit is defined as “ovoid, equi- 
lateral, or gibbous and oblique,... style short and stout, or finely 
attenuate, straight or hooked; pedicels of the fruit 1.3-3 em. long"; 
no mention being made either of R. rostellata or of the plant from 
Wood's Hole and "other places along the Atlantie coast" which 
Morong described as “nearly destitute of peduncles and pedicels.” 
These very diverse treatments of Ruppia maritima by different 
students in Europe and America have led the writers, as already 
stated, to study with some care the available American material in its 
relation to the European. The American plants fall readily into the 
two groups including R. occidentalis Watson on the one hand and on 
the other the mass of material which has passed as R. maritima; and 
in the present notes we will deal only with the latter plants and more 
especially with those which occur in the Northeast. 
In the first place, we can find among eastern specimens none which 
agree with Ruppia maritima as interpreted by such English authors as 
Britten and Rendle or Druce; or with R. maritima, subsp. spiralis 
of Graebner and of Briquet. This plant, which Briquet speaks of as 
“R. maritima L., sensu stricto,” has the peduncle after anthesis 
becoming very elongate and spirally twisted at base, and the ovoid 
slightly oblique gradually attenuate or bluntish fruiting carpels on 
podogynes 4-10 times as long. The only North American material 
which satisfies these requirements and matches closely the Old World 
specimens and plates in its long spiraling peduncles and subequilateral 
bluntish fruit is from the extreme West. Material from Clear Lake, 
California, collected by Dr. Ayres seems to us quite like the true R. 
maritima of Europe. On the Atlantic coast, however, from New- 
foundland to South America and locally on the Pacific coast, there is 
a plant with long spiraling peduncles, as in the European R. maritima, 
but with the fruit very oblique or semilunate and prominently beaked 
as in the short-peduncled R. rostellata Koch (R. maritima, var. rostrata 
1 Morong, Mem. Torr. Bot. Cl. iii. no. 2, 55, 56 (1893). 
? N. Taylor, N. A. Fl. xvii. 14 (1909). 
