COLLECTION OF VARIANTS 79 
tion.of A. macrophyllus and A. divaricatus, the Flora of 1843 had 
added to the difficulty of disentangling A. macrophyllus by empha- 
sizing wife as its prevailing color. Willdenow, who first distin- 
guished the “blue” and “ white" elements in the Linnaean 4. 
macrophyllus, made the ue (i. e., pale violet) his leading form. 
But Torrey and Gray's color phrase “ white or purplish," gave the 
white forms (A. ScAreberi, curvescens, etc.) the precedence, and it 
might be inferred that the species would ordinarily produce white 
rays. Torrey’s Flora of N. Y. said of it expressly “ rays white, 
sometimes pale blue’; and white flowers continued to be the first 
color-character for A. macrophyllus, including the Synoptical Flora, 
1884, and the description of A. macrophyllus to accompany an 
illustration in Garden and Forest,* in 1891. This tendency to 
esteem the rays white was increased by the necessity under which 
so many labored, of working from herbarium material, in which 
condition much of the blue or lavender has left the flowers. Asa 
result, white-flowered plants came so far to monopolize the 4. 
macrophylius of American botanists that presently the occurrence 
of a purplish or violet A. macrophyllus form occasioned much sur- 
prise and an attempt to bestow it under 4. Hervey. 
Keen observers, however, had begun to query if A. macro- 
Phyllus had not been made to include too much. Dr. Vasey and 
Prof. L. F. Ward had noted the unlikeness of the white-flowered 
forms (A. curvescens, etc.) ascribed to it about Washington. To 
Dr. Vasey I brought Washington plants of A. curvescens, as a 
peculiar glomerate-flowered macrophyllus form in 1887. I found 
that he had himself distinguished this form mentally for years, 
because of its smaller heads and different bracts from the 
northern macrophyllus. But the latter to him was still a white- 
flowered plant. 
Observations next appeared in the Hudson River region, Mr. 
E. P. Bicknell collecting variants about New York City (4. Schre- 
beri chiefly) and Professor C. H. Peck about Albany, etc. (A. 
Schrebert and A. glomeratus), both remarking their “intermediate 
position " toward “ A. corymbosus.” 
On the other hand, the latter observers noted another opposite 
tendency in their collections toward the highly glandular and 
* Gard. & For. 4: 88, 89. 1891. 
