450 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
by the rulings of the day and hour, may not, perhaps, for all 
botanical time be held in disregard. For it is not impossible to 
conceive that the course of nomenclatural reform in its ebb and 
flow may some day finally swing true to the line of organic morals, 
receiving for this plant, as for many another, the distinctive 
name by which it was first baptized into the annals of botany. 
In an early chapter of Genesis we find a primary if not now con- 
trolling law of nomenclature first laid down. 
*Agrimonia Bicknellii (Kearney) Rydb. comb. nov. 
A. mollis var. Bicknellit Kearney. 
Infrequent or rare; a few plants at the border of a thicket in 
Squam and at two stations in Quaise (1906), in full flower Aug. 13; 
Watt’s Run bank June 15, 1908, a few plants not yet in bud. 
ROSA CAROLINA L. 
Common in swamps and low grounds. 
ROSA VIRGINIANA Mill. 
Abundant either in dry or moist soils, often massed in extensive 
growths and forming an entanglement of formidable character 
about the borders of low thickets and on banks passing down to 
pond holes or low grounds. First flowers June 17, 1908, June 17, 
1910; not yet generally in flower June 23; a few flowers remaining 
Sept. 10, 1907. 
*ROSA sp.? 
I do not venture here to add a new name in a group of roses 
having already a too perplexed synonymy, and yet I would 
give express recognition to a rose closely allied to Rosa virginiana, 
which nevertheless seems to announce itself with some emphasis 
as being not the same. It is primarily distinguished by pyriform 
fruit, narrowed towards the base or decursive on the peduncle. 
In typical Rosa virginiana the broadly depressed globose fruit, 
expanded abruptly from the peduncle, contrasts notably with that 
of this Nantucket and Long Island rose, which is found growing 
with it, less often intermixed than in separate associated colonies. 
It remains to be determined whether forms appearing intermediate 
between the two represent natural transitions from one to the 
other or are a result of hybridization. It has not appeared that 
the marked differences in the fruit are attributable to the putea a 
of a fungus or to insect agency. 
