j^ The Ottawa Naturalist. [June 



given by Mr. Moggridge. " I am sending you by this mail a 

 bunch of cuttings and some rooted layers of the Ribes you ask 

 for. The layers will give you a fair idea of the way the plant 

 spreads. I only know of one locality where it grows near here, 

 and that is only a io-w square yards in extent. I am watching 

 over it carefully. The plant grows on a small island, just above 

 flood level,apparantly almost smothered by Salmon-berry {Riibus 

 spectabilis), the Red-berried Elder, etc., which cover the ground. 

 It does not attempt to grow to the light. I have not seen it i 

 more than 2 or 3 feet from the ground. Its long straggling 

 branches trail along as near to the soil as the\^ can get, some- 

 times running under ground for a couple of feet, where they take 

 root, and then emerging again start new bushes. The small 

 clusters of dark brown, wide-open flowers with very short tubes 

 are broader than deep and borne on very short foot-stalks. 

 They grow on last year's wood, a shoot about six inches long 

 from a bud on the older wood. The cuttings I send are from 

 the terminal shoots which are much stronger. The berries, of 

 which I have only found a few, look like an undersized red 

 currant but are very acrid in taste. The leaves are heart-shaped, 

 nearly two inches across with three large lobes and sometimes 

 the lower large lobes are divided in the middle, the leaves 

 are sharply toothed and the petioles are fringed with a few [ong 

 bristles. There are about six or eight flowers in each raceme." 



The habit of this western currant is apparently very similar 

 to that of Ribes prostratiini and may possibly have been con- 

 founded with that species in British Columbia. J. F. 



Eleocharis macounii. — While collecting Potamogetons 

 in Johnson's Lake near North Wakefield in September, 1894, 

 I found on the border of a marsh near that lake an Eleocharis 

 unknown to me growing in company with E. obtusa and E. inter- 

 viedia. It has recently been described as a new species by Mr. 

 M. L. Fernald.* As pointed out by Mr. Fernald this plant in 

 its dark elongated heads more nearly resembles the Europaean 

 E. carniolica than the American E. intermedia. He thus 

 describes it : Annual : culms slender, weak, the longest 2 or 2.5 





