74 LAWSON : EEVISION OF THE 



Manitoba. — Dr. G. M. Dmuson. " Saskatchewan Plains. — Bourgeau." " Lake Winnipeg." — 

 R. King, in Back's Expedition, 1833-4. Southern limit 40° N. lat., Northern limit 56' 

 N. — Barnston. No indigenous Aquilegia has been found in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, 

 Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Labrador, or Anticosti. 



In dry deep loose sandy soils about Toronto the plant is much larger in all its parts 

 than in the loams overlying the limestone and Laurentian rocks about Kingston. When 

 cultivated in ordinary garden soil, and especially in moist climates, as in Nova Scotia and 

 in the Edinburgh Botanic G-ardon (where it was grown by the late James McNab, from 

 seeds collected by himself in America), the flowers become much less vivid in colour than 

 in the arid soils and hot summer climate of its home in Ontario and western Quebec. 



The geogra]3hical range of this plant, which is the most easterly Aquilegia on the 

 American continent, is not correctly given in any work hitherto imblished, its distribu- 

 tion having been mixed up with that of other species, and, in some cases, erroneous 

 localities have been cited. Sir Wm. Hooker, in quoting Fort Vancouver and mouth of the 

 Columbia, no doubt referred to another species. Torrey and Gray indicated Hudson 

 Bay to G-eorgia and west to Missouri, not noticing its absence from a large portion 

 of eastern British America, and Nuttall's plant from Big Blue River of the Platte 

 is, no doubt, different. Wood does not indicate its range with much precision when he 

 says : " It grows wild in most of the States." Baker speaks of it as universally spread 

 throughout the eastern States from Canada to Florida, observing that the true Canadensis 

 is confined to the east side of the Rocky Mountains. And, lastly. Prof. Macoun, in his 

 excellent Catalogue of Canadian plants, repeats a mistaken locality, on authority of a 

 Halifax list, that would extend the plant eastward in British America at least seven 

 degrees farther than it is known to grow. A fuller record of localities than we now 

 possess is required to determine the precise north-eastern and south-western limits of 

 the lîlant in British America. Our Canadian and American botanists and collectors have 

 not yet got fully into the way of publishing, in the botanical periodicals, localities for 

 rare, unusual, or critical species, and local lists, — a practice which, in Britain and some 

 other European coimtries, has proA'-ed highly useful in furnishing data for working up 

 geographical distribution. 



Mr. Baker observes that this plant was well known to our jjre-Linnsean botanists and 

 cultivators, being one of the plants introduced to Europe by Ti-adescant. I have given 

 some of the old references (in synonymy) to illustrate this point. He further observes : 

 " We have a variety gathered by Feudler in New Mexico, with a smaller limb than in the 

 type (linear-oblong, sepals one-third inch long, lamina of petals one-quarter inch), and a 

 very long slender spur." This is no doubt the plant referred to by Gray, in Plantœ 

 Fendlerianœ, p. 4. In May, 1883, I gathered on the mesa at the base of Mount Marcel- 

 lane, on the Pacific slope of Colorado, elevation about 9,000 feet, a form corresponding to 

 Fendler's plant in the slender spurs, but the sepals are very obtuse, and no longer than 

 the petal-laminse, and the stamens are only slightly protruded beyond the petals and 

 sepals, the filaments nearly all of one length. It may rank as a A^ariety of Canadensis,^ but 

 is possibly a hybrid. 



" A. Canadensis parvijlora. Foliage thin, pedicels hairy ; sepals not at all spreading, obtuse, scarcely longer 

 than the lamina. Spur of a deep red colour, inclined to claret, paler to^-ards the limb, which is of a rather bright 

 yellow, sepals similar in colour to the spur, paler at the tips. 



