THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 83 



When found on these plants its identity with the pine rust was 

 not known and it was named Cronartmm ribicola. The rust 

 begins on the currant or gooseberry in spring and spores from 

 these plants are blown to the white pine where the damage is 

 done. Later spores from the white pine start the infection 

 anew in the currant. The spores from the currant can infect 

 either the pine or other currants, but spores from the pine seem 

 able to infect only the currant. The fungus invariably kills 

 the pine in a short time. Its appearance in this country is due 

 to the fact that it was imported with white pine seedlings. 



A New Form of Burdock. — In The Plant World for 

 June, Harry B. Brown reports the finding of a laciniate leaved 

 burdock mear Jessup, Indiana, in 1907. The lower leaves 

 were thick, ovate, acute and irregularly laciniate, and 

 the inflorescence was irregular with numerous small 

 sterile flowers. This same variety has been found in 

 two different places about Joliet, Illinois, during the present 

 summer, and it has also been found near Champaign, Illinois. 

 A peculiar feature of the Joliet and Urbana plants is the large 

 and conspicuous light colored veins that ramify through the 

 leaf. All the plants were whitish downy. The plant apears to 

 the writer to be a mere sport of the familiar Arctium minus 

 but since it may be better handled if named it is suggested that 

 it be called Arctium minus f. lociniatum. Since the burdock 

 is a European plant it is likely that this form has been observed 

 and named before but thus far the writer has found no record 

 of it. 



Effect of Selection on Corn. — We do not always 

 realize how widely a single species may vary. Some experi- 

 ments carried on at the University of Illinois for the past six 

 years has shown a remarkable amount of variation in the corn 

 plant. The purpose of the experiment was to discover what 

 could be done to change the height at v.'hich the ears were 



