BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 419 
fragment of this heather collected July 6, 1909, then just in flower. 
In flower September 3, 1902, F. G. Floyd. 
VACCINIACEAE 
GAYLUSSACIA BACCATA (Wang.) C. Koch. 
Abundant in dry thickets and open ground. In full flower 
May 30, 1909, June 15, 1911; green fruit June 18, 1910; first 
ripe fruit July 14, 1912. 
Although a low and inconspicuous shrub this huckleberry has 
much to do with giving character to parts of the Nantucket 
landscape. Here it is less a plant of woods and thickets than of 
open ground, where its habit is to mass itself into extensive 
growths, for the most part unmixed with any other species. 
Thus outspread along the hills in distant view its foliage blends 
into breadths of brassy or golden green in effective contrast with 
the more sombre tones of color spread in broad patchwork about 
it. The gray green of scrub-oak thickets, the dark olive of the 
widespread bearberry, the varied neutral shades of other low- 
growing vegetation all go to make up a composition in which the 
livelier green of this huckleberry gives the stronger contrasts and 
dominating note. 
GAYLUSSACIA FRONDOSA (L.) T. & G. 
Locally common, mainly on the eastern side of the island, 
keeping in and about thickets and never straying into the open 
like the preceding. Not yet in flower June 12, 1909; first flowers 
June 10, 1911; in full bloom June 20, 1910; some flowers remaining 
July 4, 1912. On Chappaquiddick Island I have found it bearing 
abundant fruit in the second week of October. 
GAYLussacta pumosa (Andr.) T. & G. 
Locally common in low grounds on the eastern side of the 
island; cranberry bogs about Long Pond on the western side. 
In full flower June 11, 1908, in Quaise; just in flower June 22, 
1910, Long Pond; July 2, 1912, Tom Never’s Swamp; abundant 
fruit Sept. 15, 1907. 
The Nantucket plant, or much of it, is typical of the form 
called by Doctor Fernald var. Bigeloviana. 
