﻿Bicknell: Ferns and flowering plants of Nantucket 553 



more open, even diffuse, corymbiform inflorescence. In hard 

 shallow soils the basal leaves are relatively short and broad and 

 are clustered in a flattened rosulate tuft after the manner of H. 

 venosum, and may be either purple-venose as in that species or 

 wholly green. In deeper and looser soils these lower leaves are 

 more ascending on longer petioles and are often narrowly oblanceo- 

 late and tapering acute, a few of the outermost sometimes purple- 

 veined; those that appear earliest are almost always papillose- 

 pilose on the upper surface. The longer pubescence at the base 

 of the leaves and stem varies from white-pilose to coarsely papillose- 

 hirsute with tawny hairs and, in leafy forms, may extend well up 

 on the stem which, also, with rare exceptions, is invested through- 

 out with a minute floccose or tomentulose canescence that passes 

 up through the entire panicle. This canescence of the panicle, 

 together with the very glandular, pubescent and nigrescent in- 

 volucre, appears to be a character worthy of primary consideration 

 in the determination of ambiguous examples. 



The apparent absence from Nantucket of typical H. venosum, 

 while yet its influence would seem to be discernible there in the 

 unstable phases of H. marianum, offers the suggestion that H. 

 venosum may have once belonged to the island's flora. The course 

 of its subsequent history there may then well have been that, 

 having lost the protection of its original woodland it had been 

 unable to hold its proper identity against the competition and 

 possible interbreeding of a closely related and more dominant 



* Nabalus serpentarius (Pursh) Hook. 



Confined almost exclusively to the open plains on the south 

 side of the island, and uncommon except in the southwest quarter; 

 two small plants seen in Saul's Hills. Just in flower September 14, 

 1899. Often dwarfed, with simple stem and terminal inflores- 

 cence, the smaller plants only 2-3 dm. high and the cauline leaves 

 2-3 cm. long. Stouter plants become widely bushy branched 

 and very floriferous but are never very tall. 

 Nabalus trifoliolatus Cass. 



Not uncommon on the eastern side of the island in thickets and 

 open ground, especially in the southeast quarter. On the plains 



