REPUTED MINNESOTA PLANTS WHICH PROBABLY 

 DO NOT OCCUR IN THE STATE 



C. O. ROSENDAHL AND F. K. BuTTERS 



Many of the reports of the occurrence of species of vascular 

 plants in Minnesota are based upon the Catalogue of Plants of Min- 

 nesota, by I. A. Lapham, and upon the much more extensive Cata- 

 logue of Minnesota Plants published by Warren Upham in 1884. 

 The pioneer work of Lapham, Winchell, Upham, and others, upon 

 which the latter catalogue is based, deserves high praise, consider- 

 ing that it was often incidental to work along other lines of investi- 

 gation and that much of it was done without adequate collections 

 from the various parts of the state, and often without the oppor- 

 tunity of careful comparison with material from other parts of the 

 country. 



However, there are several considerable sources of error in this 

 catalogue. There was a very evident tendency on the part of its 

 author to accept without question reports or lists of plants emanat- 

 ing from amateur and semiprofessional botanists in different parts 

 of the state. Species were frequently listed because they had been 

 reported near the boundaries of Minnesota, and might therefore be 

 expected to occur within the state. Furthermore, many specimens 

 which were actually seen by the author were not critically deter- 

 mined and were reported under the names of allied species. In 

 some of these cases the specimens are now in the Herbarium of the 

 University of Minnesota and can be readily redetermined ; but in 

 many other cases, the original report is apparently based upon iden- 

 tifications made in the field, and one can only infer what plant was 

 actually at hand. 



Since the publication of Upham's Catalogue, a number of par- 

 tial lists by various authors have appeared, some of them revisions 



