Mat 25, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



807 



remarkably plastic 'species' which cover 

 the face of the country in those places 

 where the battle for existence is at its 

 height. In the coast foot-hills near Stan- 

 ford University there is a common, large, 

 deep purple Trillium, with richly colored 

 foliage. It presents there many remark- 

 able variations, some of which are appar- 

 ently independent of locality— for instance, 

 lobing of the leaves — but it is still the same 

 old purple Trillium. Northward in the 

 San Francisco peninsula is a deep, rich, 

 isolated valley, in which the trilliums of 

 this type are almost entirely pink or white, 

 and the foliage is pale. Albino forms of 

 most colored flowers occur frequently, scat- 

 tered among the normal forms. But when 

 a whole valley is filled with them, then 

 there are general causes at work which are 

 well worthy of careful study. Torrey 

 named this form chloropetaliim. Its origin 

 from giganteum seems indicated. Perhaps 

 it has some ovatum blood intermingled— 

 who shall say 1 "Who has planted any seed 

 of these things or tried any hybridizing— 

 in fact, who has done anything but guess? 

 I have heard the most emphatic opinion 

 expressed about this form by men who had 

 'never even seen it where it grew and cer- 

 tainly intended to make no move to in- 

 vestigate it. It fits quite well the ordinary 

 definitions of species in common use. I 

 had not the least difficulty in collecting 

 fifty quite uniform specimens for distribu- 

 tion and might have easily collected fifty 

 thousand also fairly uniform in the same 

 locality. I issued it as No. 431 of my 

 West Coast Plants, and now it may be 

 referred to as Trillium giganteum, gigan- 

 teum var. albiflorum,, giganteum var. cKlo- 

 ropetalum, chloropetaliim, sessile var. chlo- 

 ropetaliim, or any of various other com- 

 binations—I care not— it is still my No. 

 431. Certain that nobody knows anything 

 positive about its relationships, and that 



no one has added a single item of knowl- 

 edge about it since Torrey called it distinct 

 under the name chloropetalum — I prefer 

 to put aside guess work for the time being, 

 and follow Dr. Greene in calling it chloro- 

 petalum, without any idea of the taxonomic 

 status of the group of individuals included 

 under the name and with no idea of worry- 

 ing about its status or entering into any 

 controversy about it, and so it will rest in 

 my mind, until some one gives the subject 

 a little scientific investigation. There are 

 hundreds, if not thousands, of groups of 

 individuals in the United States, which 

 must of a necessity be treated in exactly 

 this same manner until something exact is 

 known concerning them. I have not the 

 opportunity here for the citation of more 

 cases, or I could give many hundred very 

 similar ones and of the utmost interest 

 ■ and suggestiveness in Castilleia, Trifoliiim, 

 Drdba, Senecio, Amelanchier, Eschscholtzia, 

 Platystemon, Rosa and numerous other 

 genera. Ecology without the recognition 

 of these forms would impress one like a 

 lamp that gave no light, or a volume with 

 fancy binding from which half of the chap- 

 ters had been cut. In a recent manual of 

 ecology this feature is given a wholly sub- 

 ordinate place, and is said to be amply pro- 

 vided for by so-called 'preliminary recon- 

 naissances. ' Those who have been familiar 

 with outside opinions of American botany 

 for the past, twenty to forty years know 

 that it is the preliminary reconnaissance— 

 through the mediiim of the manuals — that 

 has brought so much discredit upon our 

 work. I maintain most emphatically that 

 the only way to make soil physics and 

 meteorology of living interest to botany is 

 to combine them throughout every step 

 with a minutely detailed and complete 

 study of all possible living plant forms. 

 The results of de Vries have only been 

 possible through such methods and we 



