76 De Vries: ATAVISTIC VARIATION IN OENOTHERA 
Ocnothera cruciata Nutt. or Onagra cruciata (Nutt.) Small, as 
it is also called, has been described and figured in Britton and 
Brown’s “ Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada 
and the British Possessions’ (2: 485. 1897). It is a rare plant, 
found wild from Vermont to New York and Massachusetts, and 
ascends to 2,000 feet in the Adirondacks. It is described as being 
annual and flowering from August to October. It may readily be 
recognized, even without flowers, by the narrowly oblong or 
oblanceolate leaves and the purple color of the nerves and the 
stem. The flowers are as small as those of O. muricata, but the 
spikes are much more slender and the fruits are less broad. In 
all these characters the European plants correspond exactly with 
the description given by Britton and Brown. The petals of the 
American type are linear instead of being broad and obcordate as 
in the allied species. 
As yet I have not had an opportunity to cultivate the original 
wild species, but I hope to be able to do so next year, as I have 
obtained seeds from the Adirondacks through the kindness of Dr. 
D. T. MacDougal, of New York, and Dr. B. L. Robinson, of Cam- 
bridge, Mass.* 
Dr. MacDougal had also the kindness to ask Dr. Britton about 
an eventual variability of the petals, but the celebrated author of 
the Illustrated Flora informed him that Oenothera cruciata does not 
make broad petals in America. 
This is the essential point. For in all the cultures I have as 
yet been able to make from seeds of this species, sent to me from 
different botanical gardens in Europe, I found the form of the 
petals to be varying in a high degrée, so as to reach, in many in- 
dividuals, the same outline as is presented by the petals of the 
allied species, O. dennis, O. muricata and others. 
For this reason, I presume that our plants are not the typical 
O. cructata of Nuttall, but a variety, which perhaps has been pro- 
duced from it in Europe. Therefore I have called my plants 0. 
cruciata varia, merely in order to distinguish them from the pure 
species. How this variety may have originated of course I do not 
know. Two possibilities present themselves. The one is by mu- 
* Seeds from different localities would be always very welcome to me, as the plant 
may be in a mutable state in some districts, while it is not so in others. 
