BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 81 
(Carnegie Inst. Wash. Publ. No. 81: 6. 1907). It was found 
in August, 1904, in the neglected yard of a small house on lower 
Union Street, where it had spread among the grass and weeds 
and strayed outside the fence into an adjoining waste lot. Inquiry 
gained the information that a number of years before it had been 
raised from seed that had been given to the then occupant of the 
premises. It could be seen that the plant had spread naturally 
from two small and long undisturbed flower beds now almost 
obliterated by an incursion of weeds and grass. The specimens 
submitted to Doctor MacDougal were collected Aug. 29, 1904, 
bearing flowers and mature fruit. Other specimens were collected 
Aug. 15, 1906. In September, 1907, it was found that a general 
clearing up of the locality had almost exterminated the plant and 
a straggling individual in the yard and one in the adjoining lot 
were all that could be found. Subsequently, with further alter- 
ations in the surroundings, the plant had disappeared. But ona 
transient visit to Nantucket, Sept. 28, 1912, the same Oenothera in 
full flower was seen in almost complete possession of a small 
uncared for yard in a built up part of the town. 
The flowers are remarkably showy, the petals bright golden 
yellow, the sepals deep purplish red. in marked contrast. The 
largest corollas were 12.7 cm. across the expanded petals, the 
smallest less than half that size (6 cm.). No fragrance was per- 
ceptible. On bright days they open late in the afternoon closing 
in the forenoon of the following day. The capsules were 2.8—3.2 
cm. long, papillate-hirsute, and glandular-puberulent with minute 
spreading hairs; seeds 1.5-2 mm. long, distinctly wing angled, 
wrinkled-lineate and rugulose. 
Doctor MacDougal in his ‘‘ Mutation Studies” of this species 
took seeds from the Nantucket specimens collected in 1904 and 
sowed them in sterilized soil in November of the same year. ‘‘On 
Jan. 27, 1904 [1905], 24 plantlets representing the widest diversity 
observable were transplanted to small pots in accordance with 
the usual practice. Six of these corresponded quite exactly to 
the mutant O. albida . . . all the other individuals developed in 
accordance with qualities of O. Lamarckiana with a maximum 
amount of color in the buds and also a maximum number of basal 
branches of some length” (Carnegie Inst. Wash. Publ. No. 81: 
6. 1907). 
