178 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
NEW PLANTS FROM VARIOUS PLACES. 
BY J. A. NIEUWLAND. 
I have for a long time suspected that the pubescent Wafer- 
Ash indigenous to the dunes of Lake Michigan and called hereto- 
fore Ptelea trifoliata Linn., var. mollis Torrey and ‘Gray,* or by 
some Ptelea mollis Curtis,t is not the same plant as either of these 
types even if they are admitted as different from one another. 
Even if these are considered as the same plants, or if even the 
Texas pubescent plant is the same as that of the dune region of 
the great lakes, which is also questionable, then the latter ought 
to receive a new name as a varietal one, the term mollis being 
accepted for Curtis’ plant. 
There seems little doubt that our western plant is distinct 
from either Ptelea mollis Curtis or Bartlett’st variety cryptoneura 
of the same. Among other things Ptelea mollis Curtis as well as 
the var. cryptoneura Bartlett have obtuse or obtusish leaves of 
firmer texture, very densely downy beneath of a yellowish green 
color, with numerous conspicuous black dots on the upper surface. 
The leaves of the Great Lake Region plant are thin and com- 
paratively little downy with rather scattered puberulence on older 
leaves. The pubescence on the twigs of our western plant never 
persists on two year old twigs, but either weathers off or not 
infrequently flakes or peels off with the epidermal layer. 
Only very young shoots have their leaves beset with white 
downy silkiness on the lower surface, for the hairs soon become 
scattered on older ones. ~The fruit of P. mollis Curtis is pear-shaped, 
and the fruit-body lies well within the upper half. The fruit of 
our middle western plant is perfectly orbicular or broad oval, 
emarginate at the apex and rounded at the base, and much larger 
than either of the Southern plants. That the plant is not a variation 
due to soil or other conditions seems evident from the fact that 
I have found it growing with P. ¢trvfoliata Linn., the plants 
standing in the same ground not six feet apart along a stream 
* Torrey and Gray, FI. I (1840). p. 680. 
+ Curtis, M. A. New and Rare Plants of the Carolinas. Am, Jr. Sc. 
Ser. 2, VII. (1849), p. 406: 
t Bartlett, H. H. Ptelea Mollis var. Cryptoneura, A Wafer Ash of the 
Georgia Sand-Hills, Rhodora, Vol. XIII, p. 80. (1910) 
