NEW AND RARE PLANTS—SOMERS. 281 
ArT. IV.—NEW AND RARE PLANTS.—By DR. SOMERS. 
(Read November 9, 1885.) 
I wisH to make a record in the Transactions of some few 
plants sent to me during the past year. 
1, J. M. Jones, Esq., forwarded a specimen of Swamp Thistle, 
Circium Muticum Mich, presenting all typical characters of the 
species. Though common in U.S. I find no previous record of 
it in our list. 
2. Miss 8. Gossip, of the Brunswick Street School, found a 
plant of the Low Ladies Slipper, having a purely white flower, 
that is, the Labium or showy part of the flower of this plant, 
instead of being of pink color streaked with darker lines of pink, 
was pure white. Miss. S. Gossip tells me she had found a similar 
plant some year or two ago in the same situation. The locality 
of this plant of Miss Gossip’s is one much favored by the colored 
plant, viz., on Ironstone or Gneissoid soil, overgrown with white 
pine and tolerably clear of underbrush. The recurrence of the 
white flowered plant might induce us to look for a form of varia- 
tion which may become permanent. It is any way an example 
of that Dimorphism or variation so common in some forms of 
plant life which fills our books with descriptions of species that 
are nothing more than varieties, and of varieties that deserve no 
permanent record of their existence. Witness the composite, 
wherein very many genera and species might with harmony and 
greater scientific accuracy be reduced to fewer typical forms. 
We find however in the species of plants now presented, at least 
speaking of the indigenous, but little tendency to vary from 
their type. In Gray’s Manual, 5th edit., 72, Cypriped acaule 
is described just as we find it about Halifax (with rarely white). 
In Wood’s Class Book, ed., 73, no mention is made of its being 
ever white-lipped; however, I find in Amos Bartar’s Manual, 
6th edition, 1833, W. & B. are placed before its description, 
but I am inclined to think he refers to mixed white and purple 
colours in the lip of the ordinary plant, and not to a purely white 
