1892. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 3 
had quite changed his mind on the limitations of species, having 
had the experience of unraveling the Gamopetale behind him, 
and the advantage of much more material for study accumulated 
in the Cambridge Herbarium. He then recognized three 
eastern species, #. repens, L., R. septentrionalis, Poir., and f. 
fasceicularis, Muhl. The name &. hispidus, Michx., used by 
Torrey and Gray in 1838 for one of the species, was now 
employed by Dr. Gray for a different one, in this following 
Hooker, Fl. Bor. Am. i. 19. 
My observations have led me to conclude that #. repens, L. 
and &. fascicularis, Muhl., are well defined in this last paper of 
Dr, Gray. But under his R&. seplentrionalis, Poir., it seems to 
me that there are at least two species. He notes that he takes 
this “to include the greater part of the assemblage of forms 
which have passed for &. repens in this country.”’ 
1. Ranuncutus repens L. Sp. P). 554 (1753). 
This European species is sparingly naturalized in south- 
eastern New York and New Jersey, being much less abundant 
than eitherR. bulbosus, L., or R. acris, L., the common field 
buttercups of the region. It occurs from Nova Scotia and 
Ontario to Virginia and is reported from various places in the 
interior. Dr. Gray notes that it is indigenous in some places, 
but I have no other evidence of this. On the label of a 
specimen collected by Mr. Coville at Oxford, N. Y., in 1886, 
Dr. Gray has written ‘‘truly indigenous,” but Mr. Coville 
tells me that this isa mistake. Dr. Gray indicates that it 
extends to New Mexico. 
It is a creeping, stoloniferous plant, with some of the 
branches ascending, and grows in dense patches along road- 
sides, etc., preferring moist sol. It is quite glabrous or 
somewhat pubescent; its leaves are pinnately tri-foliolate, 
very broadly ovate or orbicular in outline, the segments broad, 
deeply incised and lobed, and usually, so far as I have observed 
the fresh plant, blotched at the base of the lobes ; the flowers 
are as large as those of /?. acris, the petals much longer than the 
spreading sepals ; the mature achenes are oval, slightly longer 
than broad, narrowly margined and abruptly tipped with a 
short, subulate, nearly straight style, not more than one-fourth 
of their length. 
2. Ranuncutus Macovunu. 
Ranunculus hispidus Hook. Fl. Bor. Am. i. 19, (1830), 
not of Michx. 
This is a spreading or trailing hirsute species, not stoloni- 
