NOW OR NOTEWORTHY VIOLETS. 103 
owing to this fitness of the name as applying to the Quebec 
plant, that I retain that as the type of V. subviscosa, 
V. MELISSHFOLIA. Rootstock stoutish, branching, knotted, 
but white, the roots very fine-fibrous and white: loosely clus- 
tered leaves and flowers 5 to 10 inches high ; herbage rather pale, 
very thin and delicate, but peduncles and petioles, though soft 
and weak, not slender, very sparsely and obscurely hirtellous- 
hairy ; leaf. blades small for a plant so tall, the largest not 2 
inches long, many not more than 1 inch, round-cordate to cor- 
date-ovate, the youngest cucullate, all very regularly though 
rather coarsely crenate all around, even into the basal sinus and 
to the insertion on the petiole, both faces, but especially the 
upper, finely appressed pubescent, though sparsely so, the whole 
margin ciliolate: flowers large, nearly an inch in diameter, sky- 
blue; 2 lower sepals lanceolate, the others oblong-lanceolate, all 
obtusish, ciliolate; petals with broad rounded limb, the keel 
shorter, laterals with a tuft of villous hairs, all with deep-purple 
veins. 
Dry ground, in shade of Hemlock Spruce, Prince Edward 
Island, L. W. Watson, 1902. Allied to F. nesiotica, but very dif- 
ferent; in habit recalling V. prionosepala in a way, yet in no 
wise related to that group. 
V. Dickson, Greene, Pitt. iv. 65. Since the publication of 
this violet as new, Mr. Dickson has collected and forwarded to 
me two consignments of carefully made specimens, one of which 
exhibits the plant in its æstival stage, fruiting from apetalous 
flowers; and in this condition the species is most singular among 
known violets. In the largest of the specimens there are about 
three fruits, two of which are capsular, at the ends of short 
peduncles that are not only horizontal but blanched, thus evine- 
ing the fact of their having developed in the complete shade of 
at least new leaf-mold at the surface of the soil; while the third 
fruit is not only completely hypogeous, but converted into what 
