64 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
the town and also along a sandy driveway above the cliff. In 
1909 it was seen at several places and at as remote a point as the 
life-saving station near the southwestern end of the island. 
Specimens collected at Shimmo Valley farm June 2, 1909, too 
young for satisfactory determination, but doubtless referable to 
this species, are noteworthy. They are unusually foliaceous, with 
the rosulate basal leaves pinnate or deeply pinnatifid with laciniate- 
dentate segments ; the flowers are distinctly petaliferous, the petals 
varying from rudimentary to 1.5 mm, in length. 
* LEPIDIUM NEGLECTUM Thell. (?) 
While I think that there can be no doubt about the occurrence 
of this species on Nantucket, the interrogation mark is employed 
because the specimens collected are too immature for positive 
identification. They grew in waste ground at Shimmo Valley 
farm June 2, 1909, in flower and early fruit. 
The plant itself, although common enough in our eastern flora, 
has not yet made its way into our manuals, and thereby hangs a 
tale which may appropriately be narrated here. As far back as 
1895 I collected in and near Van Cortlandt Park, New York, at 
three rather widely separated localities, a Lepidium: which was 
clearly distinct from any of our eastern species then recognized. 
In that year Doctor B. L. Robinson had completed his study of 
the genus Lepfidium for the Synoptical Flora of North America 
and I well remember discussing with him the Van Cortlandt speci- 
mens at the Columbia University herbarium in its old home in 
Hamilton Hall. The plant was determined by Doctor Robinson 
as Lepidium medium Greene and so recorded in Syn. Fl. N. Am. 
t'; 468, published in 1897. Subsequently, in 1898, I collected 
the same plant in Bronx Park, N. Y., and also on Mt. Desert, 
Maine, where a single specimen was found in a clearing near the 
woodland bicycle path. I noticed it also near Short Hills, New 
Jersey, in 1900, and of late years have found it to be rather well 
distributed in southwestern Long Island. 
In the year 1899 Mr. Percy Wilson collected at random, he tells 
me, a number of specimens of Lepidium at Bedford Park, New 
York, near the entrance of the New York Botanical Garden. These 
were forwarded in an exchange of specimens to Doctor Albert 
Thellung, at Zurich, who, as it happened, was engaged on his 
