1922] Gardner: The Genus Fucus on the Pacific Coast 11 



formae edentatus, distichus, and linearis. Setchell and Gardner (1903, 

 pp. 280, 281) used the term in flatus to include certain plants in the 

 Puget Sound region which were placed under the forms edentatus, 

 linearis, and filiformis of this species. 



The type of F. edentatus De la Pyl. is in the herbarium of the 

 Museum of Paris. Dr. M. A. Howe has examined and photographed 

 this type specimen and through his courtesy I have received a print of 

 the negative, which I have reproduced on plate 60, figure 1. I have 

 examined dried specimens from the north Atlantic coast of a relatively 

 narrow form, which are smooth and black on drying and free from 

 caecostomata, which seem to me to correspond with the description 

 and illustration of the type of edentatus. Several of our forms which 

 have been previously associated with F. inflatus seem, on close com- 

 parison with these eastern specimens, to belong with the edentatus 

 lineage rather than with the much more vague inflatus lineage, and I 

 am placing them in accordance with this view. 



I am using the term edentatus as a species major to include mostly 

 narrow, smootli, and glossy forms, almost black on drying, practically 

 free from caecostomata and with few cryptostomata. 



There are remaining certain northern forms which do not seem to 

 fit in well with any of these groups. They have more or less mem- 

 branaceous fronds, with no caecostomata, are usually decidedly 

 yellowish in color, have the cryptostomata most abundant on the 

 terminal and subterminal segments and these crj'ptostomata protrude 

 on drying. These I have grouped under the species major which I 

 have designated as memhranaceus. 



In treating of the Fucus flora of the northwest coast of North 

 America, Setchell and Gardner (1903, p. 281) adopted Fucus evan- 

 escens as a satisfactory name to include most of the forms then known 

 in that region. This species thus is given the widest range in distribu- 

 tion of all the described species, since this name ha.s been applied to 

 plants of both shores of the North Atlantic and of the North Pacific 

 as well as of the Arctic oceans. One of the chief characters upon 

 which this species is based, viz., the vanishing of the midrib in the 

 terminal and .subterminal segments, is as fluctuating as any other 

 character. It may be seen on plate 35 that the midrib extends to the 

 very tips of the segments. This plate represents a plant from Spitz- 

 bergen determined by J. Agardh. Three fragments of plants, no. 

 132622 of the Herb. Univ. Calif., from the same region collected by 

 Kjellman likewise show the midrib quite distinctly. Plate 1, figure 2, 



