416 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
finally disappeared. This is the only plant of Calluna ever found 
on the island whose presence there remained to Mrs. Owen 
altogether unexplained. At the place where in this day the heather 
principally grows it came in with trees imported from Europe by 
Mr. Henry Coffin in 1877 and subsequent years, and was first 
found by Mr. Lawrence Coffin in 1886, then well established. 
Since that time it has been sought to naturalize the heather-on 
the island by several persons who have scattered the imported 
seed and even set out young plants. 
The earliest record known to me of Calluna vulgaris on Nan- 
tucket, as well as of the cross-leaved heath, Erica Tetralix, was 
published by Mr. O. R. Willis in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botan- 
ical Club for December, 1886; the plants had been found the same 
year by Mrs. Charlotte E. Pearson in a tract planted with larches 
imported from Europe. 
Mrs. Owen has mentioned half a dozen localities other than 
this now well-known one, where this heather has been found, at 
three of which, two of them far out on the commons, it is not 
known to have been planted. I, myself, have met with it at 
five localities, all of them mentioned by Mrs. Owen except perhaps 
one on the plains in the direction of the old Kimball farm where, 
on June 3, 1909, a solitary cluster was growing which measured 
28 inches in greatest diameter. 
At the place where this heather was first introduced I came 
upon it quite accidentally on Aug. 9, 1906, when, with the cross- 
leaved heath, it was in full flower. Since that time it has continued 
to spread, and of late years has become well naturalized in scat- 
tered growth among the pines. In 1908 the main growth covered 
a general area of 17 by 14 paces, made up of straggling groups, 
small separate clusters, and several masses of considerable size. 
In 1911 it seemed to be more abundant than I had seen it at any 
time before, but in July of the following year, after the inter- 
vening cold but not snowy winter, much of it had been winter- 
killed, at least its upper parts. It showed no signs of flowering 
on July 3, 1909, nor on July 17, 1908; on July 26, 1910, no buds 
could be found on the wild plant but one in cultivation in a garden 
in the town bore long racemes of pink buds. The wild plant was 
in full flower August 9, 1906, August 10, 1895 (F. G. F), and bore 
some fresh flowers September 18, 1897. 
