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THE OTTAWA f(ATURALIST. 



Vol. XV. OTTAWA, NOVEMBER, 1901. No. 8. 



ON SOME CANADIAN SPECIES OF GENTIANA : SECTIO 



CROSSOPETALvE, FRCEL. 



Bj- TnKO. Holm. 

 (With four Plates.) 



That very natural group of North American species of 

 Froelich's section CrossopefnlceK the so-called "Fringed Gentians," 

 has long been in need of careful revision. The latest treatment of 

 the genus, as it occurs in North America, is the one presented by 

 Asa Gray in the Synoptical Flora*, wherein the species, however, 

 are described with much the same distinctions as in other 

 works of the same author. Writers of a more recent date have 

 generally felt so much influenced by that author's decisions that 

 they have not seemed to question the correctness of his pronounce- 

 ments, and have not examined the diagnoses further. Conse- 

 quently the same species are enumerated and the diagnoses 

 faithfully reproduced in the manuals and local Floras, on the 

 strength of which botanists abroad have finally attributed a geo- 

 graphical range to some of these species extending throughout the 

 northern hemisphere. 



Among these Gcntiance is Gunner's G. serrata, which by Gray 

 and subsequent authors is unanimously regarded as an inhabitant 

 of North America, and its geographical distribution is by Gray 

 (1. c.) given as " Newfoundland, Canada and N. W. New York to 

 Saskatchewan and northward, and west to Colorado and W. 



^ Froelich, Joseph Al. De Genliana dissertatio Eriangen, p. 109. 1796. 

 Gray, Asa. Synoptical Flora of North America, Vol. 2, p. 116. New 



2 

 York. 1886 



