﻿346 Bickxell: Ferns and 



come as large as 3 cm. long and 6 mm. wide; the corolla, 1.5-2 mm. 

 in expanse, is four-parted or, in smaller flowers, three-parted, the 

 lobes either acute or obtuse; the fruit 1-1.5 mm. in diameter, is 

 borne on slender spreading pedicels sometimes fully 12 mm. in 

 length which are disposed to be arcuate and slightly scabrous. 

 Smaller and narrower leaved plants having pedicels of this char- 

 acter so closely simulate Galium trifidum L. that they might easily 

 be misidentified. It would be hard to believe of these divergent 

 phases of Galium Claytoni that they were other than well-defined 

 species, were it not that the gradation from one to the other is 

 gradual and complete and did not as many examples lie midway 

 in the range of variation as at either extreme. Almost the same 

 extent of variation in the species may be observed on Long Island 

 and about New York. If it be thought expedient to recognize 

 the larger form by a name we have for it the varietal designation 

 Galium Claytoni var. subbiflorum Wiegand (Rhodora 12: 228-230. 

 1910). 



It could be wished that the name Galium Claytoni were better 

 accredited in its application to this plant for which we have come 

 to use it. A careful reading of Michaux's description leaves little 

 doubt in my own mind that his G. Claytoni was no other plant 

 than the G. trifidum of Linnaeus. Michaux was particular to 

 emphasize of his species that its leaves were in fours or, rarely, in 

 fives, never in sixes, thus meeting exactly the case of G. trifidum; 

 and it is further suggestive in his description that the rather 

 ambiguous phrase "fasciculus ramorum terminalibus" at once 

 becomes clear and at the same time diagnostic of G. trifidum, if we 

 may understand it to mean that, except at the ends of the branches, 

 the flowers were solitary. Upon these indications, and others not 

 necessary now to bring forward, there would seem to be little 

 reason to doubt that the species we have been calling Galium 

 Claytoni has never received a name proper to its own identity, 

 unless, indeed, it should bear the name Galium tinctorium L., 

 now otherwise appropriated. Bigelow and some others of our 

 earlier botanists took this view, that is to say, their descriptions 

 make it plain that this name was understood by them as applying 

 to the larger phase of the plant now called G. Claytoni; and, as a 

 matter of fact, the description of G. tinctorium in Species Plantarum 



