36 PROCEEDINGS S. I, ASSN. ARTS AND SCIENCES. [VoL. .1 



This is particularly the case where they have been cut off during" the 

 summer, and not having- been able to blossom at the usual time, they 

 make a hasty g-rowth in the few remaininng warm days. Such plants 

 are usualiy low and spreading, and what is of more interest is the fact 

 that the g-reen involucral bracts are foliaceous, and as long- or long-er 

 than the orang-e rays. Plants of this description have been found on 

 our Island in October and in November. 



Another interesting- variation was. observed by Dr. Philip Dowell 

 and me at Sufifern in Rockland Co., N. Y., where we found a g-reat 

 many cone flowers with very flat, small ovoid disks. They truly did 

 not deserve the name of " cone flowers." 



Still another variation was found in a plant gfrowing- on the embank- 

 ment of the railroad near Sufifern. It was a larg:e and flourishing- plant 

 of R. hirta with the rays terra cotta colored, splashed irreg-ularly with 

 orang-e. It made a conspicuous and beautiful flower cluster. 



Occasionally a cone flower producing- one or more fasciated stems 

 will be found, each stem bearing- at its top a head of flowers made up 

 of two or more of the usual flowers combined. We have also found 

 heads with a double rowr of rays but otherwise showing no departure 

 from the typical flowers. 



The most interesting- variation of Rudbeckia hirta that we have to 

 mention is, however, one that was found last June in the rise on the 

 salt meadows known as " Egypt," on the south side of our Island. 

 The plant bore three flowers, each having all of the rays tubular instead 

 of flat. The under surface of the rays formed the outside of the tubes 

 which were complete, each tube having a dentated opening about 

 3 mm. wide. Two of the flowers had nine rays each, and one flower 

 had eleven rays. The usual number of rays in this species is about 

 thirteen or fourteen. 



Cone flowers with tubular rays have been recorded before, and in 

 an article on "Unusual Forms in Plants," printed in Appleton's Popular 

 Science Monthly for July, 1899, Byron D. Halsted writes as follows : 

 " A few weeks ago while passing through a field once devoted to corn, 

 but now overgrown with weeds, and therefore of special interest to the 

 botanist, my eyes fell upon a daisy plant all the heads of which were fur- 

 nished with olive-green ray flowers instead of the ordinary pure white 

 ones. These rays were smaller than the normal and quile inclined to roll 

 . , . and form quills, as seen in some of the fancy chrysanthemums . . . 

 A week or so later, while going through a similar field in an adjoining 

 county to the one where the daisy freak was found, I came upon nearly 

 the same thing as seen in the heads of the "black-eyed Susan," or cone 

 flower {Jiudbeckia hirta L.)" 



