BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET .615 
*Crocanthemum propinquum Bicknell. 
Helianthemum propinquum Bicknell. 
Rather local, but not uncommon in dry open places or along 
sandy roadways through pine barrens. Common on Marthas 
Vineyard. In full bloom June 26, 1910; not many flowers left 
June 29, 1912; a few belated flowers July 11, 1912. 
This plant, not at all uncommon from Nantucket to western 
Long Island and doubtless further south, appears to remain 
almost unknown to botanists and seems not to have been reported 
by any collector since it was first described in Britton’s Manual 
over eleven years ago. In the seventh edition of Gray’s Manual 
it has been quite misunderstood, being mistaken for the plant 
described in this paper as Crocanthemum dumosum and referred 
to as being probably only a stunted form of C. canadense. 
I know the plant now much better than when I ventured to 
give it a name and have found no reason to doubt that it is an 
unequivocal species, that is to say, one that is organically discrete 
from those allied species which most nearly approach it, however. 
close the degree of their relationship. Narrow indeed is the 
interval between this plant and those other convergent species 
whose distribution it partly shares. But I have not found in 
this any proof of consanguinity but rather an example of the 
exceeding closeness in which specific lines may run in perfect 
security from coalescence or entanglement. The plant is to be 
viewed critically especially in its relation to C. majus. Its. 
clustered primary flowers at once give this indication and mark 
its distinctness from C. canadense. Singularly enough, however, 
in the later stages of its growth it more nearly resembles the 
latter, agreeing in color of foliage and slender ascending branches 
surpassing the primary inflorescence. This character of the 
mature plant sketches it out clearly from C. majus, of strict 
habit and short close branches, but in its unbranched early- 
flowering stage, then also of paler foliage, it is almost a reduced 
counterpart of the larger plant. 
To review its differences from Crocanthemum majus, it is a 
much smaller and more slender and flexuous plant, at length 
more openly and slenderly branched, less densely canescent from 
the first and finally much greener, the leaves narrower and more 
