108 BicKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
duced and slender, sparsely weak-prickly form with prostrate or 
trailing flowering stems, small leaflets, and a simple, more racemose 
inflorescence. This smaller plant is often strictly trifoliolate and 
so nearly approaches forms of R. hispidus that the lines of dis- 
tinction between the two become much confused if not quite 
obliterated. The petals vary like the leaflets and may be narrowly 
oblong or nearly orbicular. ! 
Certain more pronounced examples of the broad-leaved trailing 
plant I was at first inclined to regard as involved with R. flagel- 
laris, and they may be, but further study of the specimens seems 
to show that they are not necessarily other than an extreme vari- 
ation of R. nigricans. Still, should anyone choose to esteem this 
Nantucket plant a distinct species it would not be difficult to 
concur. 
My observation of the entire species seems to show that the 
coarser, more densely bristly and more pubescent forms are devel- 
oped among the rank vegetation of heavier wet soils, and that the 
more spiny and glabrate forms belong to soils that are damp and 
sandy. In dry open places occur forms, either pubescent or glab- 
rate, which are almost non-glandular and sometimes only sparsely 
armed with recurved bristles or prickles. Adjoining stems arising 
from the same root may be variously armed, and I havea specimen 
collected at Woodmere, Long Island, which strikingly illustrates 
the great variability of the plant, an almost unarmed, loosely 
pubescent stem arising side by side from the same root with one 
densely clothed with slender bristles and gland-tipped hairs but 
destitute of any proper pubescence. , 
Just in flower and in full flower at different stations on Nan- 
tucket June 22, 1910; some ripe fruit August 9, 1906. 
RuBus uHispipus L. 
Common and very variable. Stems densely invested with 
weak, retrorse, bristly hairs or armed ‘with few or many slender, 
straight or decurved hard prickles, and bearing gland-tipped hairs 
throughout or only on the growing parts; leaves from obovate or 
orbicular and crenate-dentate to cuneate, very acute and cut- 
serrate, the inflorescence with or without bristly or gland-tipped 
hairs, the calyx lobes glabrate to canescent, rarely with reddish 
glandular hairs; occasionally 5-foliolate leaves are produced. 
