34 6 . The Botanical Gazette. [December, 



or acutish, entire, 3 to 6 lines long: staminate flowers in short crowded 

 terminal spikes; pistillate flowers in axillary clusters; bracts thick 

 and spongy, t l / z to 2 lines long, obovate, united to above the middle, 

 the free margins above broad and truncate or rounded or acutish, 

 entire, the sides very variously and irregularly appendaged with spongy 

 tubercles or crests which have usually a corrugated appearance when 

 dry. — Nearly allied to A. Nuttallii. Discovered by Miss Alice East- 

 wood at Grand Junction, Colorado, in well formed fruit on 20th May, 

 1891. Miss Eastwood notes it as the earliest in fruit of several per- 

 ennial species of the genus growing in the same locality. 



Ranunculus glaberrimus, Hook.— This common alpine species 

 of the western mountains is much more variable in several respects 

 than the published descriptions would indicate. The leaves vary 

 from broad to narrow, and though the cauline leaves are ordinarily 

 lobed, at least some of them, yet it occasionally happens that all are 

 entire. The plant is as a rule wholly glabrous, but the sepals are 

 sometimes sparsely villous with white hairs, and the achenes are either 

 smooth or finely pubescent. This more pubescent form, as coPected 

 by Mr. Siler in southern Utah with entire leaves, was referred by Dr. 

 Gray to B. Lent mom, which species is as yet known only from the orig- 

 inal locality in the Sierra Nevada. 



Ranunculus Mac^uleyi, Gray. — Fine fruiting specimens of this 

 rare species have been recently collected by Miss Eastwood in the 

 Elk Mountains above Irwin, Colorado. The achenes are small, in an 

 oblong-ovate head, smooth, somewhat compressed, and beaked with 

 a rather long linear-subulate straight style. The species appears to 

 be well distinguished from JR. Altaicus by its pilose-ciliate leaves, glab- 

 rous linear-oblong receptacle, and longer styles.— Sereno Watson, 



Cambridge, Mass. 



The sterile flowers of Panicum clandestiniim.— The past season 



there was brought into the laboratory by a student a specimen of this 

 species in which the sterile flowers had three well developed stamens. 

 According to Gray's Manual, the lower or sterile flower is "(always?) 

 neutral. " On examination of a large number of specimens from this 

 vicinity, it was found that by far the greater number had the lower or 

 sterile flowers staminate. Specimens from Nebraska showed many 

 staminate flowers also. Michigan specimens had the sterile flowers 

 neutral. It was also observed that specimens collected early in the 

 season had a larger number of staminate flowers than those collected 

 later.— Thos. A. Williams, State Agricultural College, Brookings, S. D. 

 Peculiar forms of proliferation in timothy, (with plate xxvi.)— 

 In a small plat of Timothy growing on the Experiment Station 



