122 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
or widely branched; stems dull green to deep purplish brown, 
usually thinly pubescent the first year, angled to subterete; prickles 
rather numerous, short and strong, 2-4 mm. long, mostly straight 
and somewhat retrorse on the season’s shoot, becoming uncinate 
on the flowering stems and branches and, especially, on the some- 
what villous-pubescent petioles; primary leaves rather light 
dull green above, paler beneath, 5-foliolate or 3-foliolate, the 
petioles mostly 5-8 cm. long; leaflets thinly subappressed-villous’” 
on the upper surface, softly subspreading short-pubescent beneath, 
ciliolate, denticulate-serrulate and frequently also irregularly 
somewhat cut-lobed; odd leaflet broadly ovate-oblong to obovate, 
mostly 5-8 cm. long and 3—5 cm. wide, abruptly short-acuminate, 
rounded at the base, its petiolule 1.5—2.5 cm. long; lateral leaflets 
obovate- or elliptic-oblong, often rhombic, narrowed to the base, 
and tapering to an acuminate apex, sessile or nearly so, the lower 
pair short and deflexed ; flowering branchlets short, often numerous 
and approximate, somewhat villous with a cinereous pubescence, 
bearing 3-4 trifoliolate leaves and above them one or more uni- 
foliate leaves in the corymbiform raceme; pedicels 1-4 cm. long, 
villous-tomentulose, armed with short straight prickles; calyx 
lobes ovate-oblong, apiculate to subfoliaceous-acuminate, densely 
pubescent on the outer surface, white-flocculent within; petals 
conspicuous, broadly oblong to obovate-orbicular, sometimes 2 cm. 
long, the flowers 2.5—3.5 cm. wide; fruit ovoid-oblong, of good size, 
becoming 2. 5 cm. long, pulpy but rather large-seeded, of indifferent 
avor. 
Common; first flowers June 8, 1908, June 12, 1909; passing out 
of bloom June 26, 1910. Fruit ripe August 2, 1906. 
A characteristic blackberry of Nantucket, growing in dry or 
damp sandy soil about the borders of thickets or in open situations. 
It bears the aspect of an established species and may, indeed, be a 
factor in some of the crosses that have been ascribed to other 
parentage. If of hybrid origin it seems nevertheless to have 
acquired a detached and independent existence and is, perhaps, 
less often found in close association with its supposed parents 
than apartfromthem. Evidence of its origin as a cross may be 
deduced from its localized habitat, its intermediate character 
between Rubus frondosus and Rubus Batleyanus or Rubus pro- 
cumbens, and the fluctuations of its variable forms towards one 
or the other of these species. Furthermore, on Long Island, forms 
occur which although not identical with the Nantucket plant are 
yet so similar to it that any fundamental difference between them 
