Vol. 38 No. 3 
BULLETIN 
OF THE 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 
re eee 
MARCH, tot! 
The ferns and flowering plants of Nantucket—VII 
EuGENE P. BICKNELL 
ROSACEAE 
THE BLACKBERRIES 
Blackberries are abundant on Nantucket, growing nearly 
everywhere except in the salt marshes. Low or trailing forms 
predominate, but the taller kinds are only less common and 
widespread. The visiting botanist who may be interested in 
blackberries will notice at once among some of the common eastern 
species others of less familiar aspect, and will shortly discover 
that the group as a whole embraces a numerous and variously 
interrelated series of forms, which give a problem in classification 
not easily solved. An attempt to understand these plants will 
find little or no help in published works, nor is the obscurity 
that invests them at all illuminated by the numerous descriptions 
of alleged new species, which of late years have found their way 
into print. Ina recent paper* I have suggested that the solution 
of this blackberry problem is to be sought, not in a recourse to 
a large and dubious number of closely related new forms, but 
rather in a clear reading of the broad lines marked out by a com- 
paratively few primary species, most of which were long ago well 
defined. It would seem to‘ have eventuated in nature that each 
one of these primary species ranges structurally through a very 
wide orbit of variation, and that, in addition, all are involved in 
actual organic entanglement — a process of intercrossing, 
*Bull. Torrey Club lub 37: 393-403. 8S1 
{The BULLETIN for February, I91I (38: pn onal was issued 7 Mr ro1t.] 
