iQoi] Holm — Allies of Stellaria Medium. 37 



ALLIES OF STELLARIA MEDIA (L.) Cyrillo. 



By Theo. Hcvlm, 

 (With two plates.) 



Plants as common as the " common Chickweed " are seldom 

 collected by botanists, very seldom studied, and as a rule, but 

 poorly represented in herbaria. Authors of manuals, especially in 

 North-America, have usually paid very little attention to the 

 plant, and no variety or subspecies has, so far, been recorded 

 from Canada or the United States. Being- considered as a weed 

 infesting- gardens, and being so very abundant everywhere in damp 

 soil, it has escaped attention in this country, although other 

 plants of similar frequent occurrence, and with much the same 

 behaviour as weeds have been granted a good deal of attention, 

 and have been treated quite elaborately by systematic botanists. 

 But Stellaria media appears always to be the same, a single 

 species with no characteristic forms or varieties appended, yet it is 

 recognized as being equally common in the boreal and temperate 

 regions of both the old and new world, and to produce its flowers 

 from earliest spring to late autumn or sometimes even throughout 

 the winter. 



Judging from a geographical range such as this, one 

 would naturally suspect that the species would hardly be 

 equally uniform and constant in appearance, as it is noted 

 to be common nearly everywhere. We all know that it 

 may be met with in our wandermgs through woods and thickets, 

 along borders of creeks, in old river-bottoms, very often remote 

 from inhabited places, yet it is always looked upon as an intro- 

 duced plant of no interest whatever. Whether it was introduced 

 to this country from Europe or Siberia, no one knows, but the 

 probability is, that it has existed on the Pacific Coast a sufficient 

 time to develop into several varieties, or perhaps even subspecies 

 with power to spread towards more distant regions in eastern 

 direction. It would be interesting to know something about its 

 geographical distribution in the boreal parts of America, where 

 it, no doubt, extends beyond the Arctic circle as it does in Siberia 

 and Europe, Russia for instance ; that it extends from the Pacific 



