4 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [oer 3, 
ferous, so far as I know, occurring from western Ontario to 
British Columbia, and south in the Rocky Mountain region to 
Arizona and New Mexico, It is readily distinguishable from 
R. repens by its larger leaves, stronger habit, obovate petals 
scarcely or not at all longer than the reflexed sepals, and almost 
marginless, slightiy larger and flatter achenes, which are tipped 
with a shorter, slightly stouter style. 
R. hispidus of Michaux is, as will be shown, one of the long- 
styled plants included by Dr. Gray in Lf. septentrionaiis. 
R. Macounii has its nearest affinity in /. Pennsylvanicus which 
differs in its erect stem, smaller flowers, more finely divided 
leaves with still narrower segments and oblong or cylindric 
head of more numerous and smaller achenes, and is of eastern 
distribution. 
3. Ranuncuus uispipus Michx,. Fl. Bor. Am. 1, 321 (1803). 
I have seen the type of this plant in Michaux’s Herbarium at 
the Jardin des Plantes, and it is clearly a common plant of the 
Eastern and Middle States and not at all the western species 
called hispidus by Hooker, which Michaux, in all probability, 
never saw, Dr. Gray’s remarks (Proc. Amer. Acad. xxi. 375) 
to the contrary notwithstanding. It is an early-blooming 
woodland species, often flowering about New York as early as 
April 15th, and much before any of the other buttercups. It 
is not stoloniferous so far as I have observed; the young stems 
are usually densely villous-pubescent but become glabrate or 
appressed-pubescent in age; the roots are numerous, thick and 
fleshy, the leaves are pinnately three-divided (very rarely pin- 
nately five-divided), very pubescent, at least when young, the 
segments ovate, oblong or obovate, nearly cuneate at the base, 
and sharply cleft and lobed; the flowers are a half inch to one 
and one half inches broad, with petals considerably longer 
than the spreading sepals ; (usually twice as long) the head of 
fruit is usually somewhat longer than thick, though often 
globose; the achenes are nearly orbicular, lenticular, narrowly 
margined and, when mature, abruptly tipped by a subulate- 
curved style of about one-half their length. 
The species was taken for &. fascicularis Muhl., by Schlecht- 
endahl, Animad., ii. 30, t. II., (1819), who gives a very good 
figure of it, and it was also so-called by Austin, Leggett and 
other New York botanists. In Torrey and Gray’s Flora, N. A., 
and in Torrey Flora, N. Y., it appeared as R. repens, var, 
Marylandicus. In my catalogue of tie Plants of New Jersey it 
appeared as &. fascicularis, and I take this opportunity of stating 
that so far as I know, &. fascicularis does not occur in that 
