THREE NEW RANUNCULI. 195 
5 petals round-obovate: achenes with stout beak nearly as 
long as the body and slightly incurved, forming a subglo- 
bose head. 
A fine large buttercu p of the region of the Great Lakes, 
from perhaps Ontario to Iowa and Minnesota, inhabiting 
only wet meadow lands, growing among tussocks of Carex, 
Caltha palustris often one of its near neighbors or associates. 
It flowers in about the middle of May, and never very copi- 
ously. By the 20th of June it is found in mature fruit and 
already trailing with branches several feet long, the upper 
nodes rooting in the mud, each forming a new plant. Be- 
tween the years 1860 and 1870 I was familiar with the 
plant, in southern Wisconsin, when, being discontent with 
it as a mere form of R. repens, as it was then called by the 
authorities, I labelled it R. hispidus in my herbarium. The 
name well enough answers to its character. It is almost 
hispid, whereas the real R. hispidus is only hirsute. Some 
more recent “authorities” have concluded it to be a form of 
H septentrionalis; and lastly, it clearly enters into the com- 
position of the aggregate R. Macounii, the main part of 
which is an exceedingly different small-flowered plant of far- 
Western mountain districts. 
The above diagnosis is from material of my own gather- 
ing in southern Wisconsin in 1888, and in southern Michi- 
gan in 1902. : 
R. ILLINORNSIS. Perennial, the roots many, coarse, fleshy- 
fibrous; the several stems a foot high more or less, at first 
flowering scarcely exceeding the longest basal leaves; 
herbage green but under a lens sparsely appressed-pubescent ; 
a few of the very earliest leaves rounded, only very obscurely 
if at all lobed, those next them with 3 broad rounded lobes, 
the latest basal and earlier cauline 3 to 5-parted or merely 
lobed, the lobes or divisions oval to oblong, entire: peduncles 
Solitary or 2 or 3 terminating each of the several stems; 
