1906 | Tue Swan Sonc OF THE LEAVES. 197 
A NEW NORTHERN ANTENNARIA. 
By EpwarpD L. GREENE. 
ANTENNARIA ATHABASCENSIS. Stout and low, the pistillate 
plant at flowering only 2 to 2% inches high, the spread of the 
depressed and rosulate foliage in some approaching 3 inches: 
leaves subcoriaceous, spatulate-obovate, very obtuse, without 
evicent mucro, the peliolar basal part not at all well differentiated 
and short, upper face dull pale green, glabrous except as to some 
rolls of light leose flocculent or cottony wool along the margin, 
beneath densely silvery, tomentose, some of the tomentum pro- 
jecting beyond the edge of the leaf and appearing from above asa 
white margin to the leaf: infloresence of 3 to 5 large sessile heads: 
involucre loosely tomentose at base, the bracts all with very long 
white tips, the outer broad and nearly truncate, the next narrower 
and acutish, the inmost series fairly subulate and exceeding all 
the others in length: male plant not seen. 
Fort Chippweyan, Athabasca, 4 June, 1903, Edward A. Preble; 
type specimens in U. S. Herb. A very strongly marked member 
of the group of A. neglecta, but a coarse and stout plant as to 
habit, though low in stature. The heads are as large as those of 
the Rocky Mountain A. africa, but in character very different from 
those of that species. 
THE SWAN SONG OF THE LEAVES. 
By Mary ELIZABETH McOuwart, B.A. 
These leaves that redden to the fall.— Zennyson. 
Among the more commonly observed phenomena of nature it 
is doubtful if there is any more commonly misunderstood than the 
coloring and fall of leaves in autumn. When the plain green of 
summer changes so suddenly to gold and crimson most people 
take it for granted that the frost is responsible for the transforma- 
tion. But anyone who will take the trouble to think a little will 
see that this is a mistake. It is in August, long before the frost 
comes, that the red maple ‘‘crimsons to a coral reef,’’ and it is in 
years when the frost comes late that the leaves color most beauti- 
fully. 
