114 DESCRIPTION OF ASTERS; DIVARICATI 
Greek obol. In the preceding mixed-leaf states only a minor part 
of the caulines manifest arrest ; in many plants of the present form 
all or nearly all of the leaves do so from the middle of the stem 
upward, the leaf-succession changing abruptly from the ovate- 
acuminate serrate lower leaves 312 x 2 in., to the small sub- 
circular upper leaves, about 11% in. long and broad, in parts 
repand denticulate or entire. Occasionally one of these leaves 
escapes the arrest-tendency and becomes long like the lower 
leaves. On the other hand, sometimes some of these small leaves 
become reniform and more than twice as broad as long. 
Petioles narrow, very slender; the lower petioles longer than 
the leaf-breadth, the upper ones becoming shorter and often nar- 
rowly cuneate-winged. ona rather small and close, the 
heads and bracts nearly as the 
Nothing else suffers sia except the upper leaves. The 
same cluster of some 40 plants has been watched for 10 years 
without change in character except that during the last four years 
vitality has seemed low, the stems shorter, and the whole group 
of rootstocks dying out 
I do not describe it as a species because it seems uncertain if 
it perpetuates itself. 
or any indication of an external cause of arrest we look in 
vain ; it is not due to local conditions of soil, shade or crowding, 
as a half-dozen other divaricatus-forms grow with this under the 
same chestnut tree without showing the same arrest-tendency. 
The bright, smooth surface, and clear green of the arrest- 
leaves has year after year indicated their own healthy condition, 
quite equal to that of the non-arrested plants in their company. 
To the inquirer as to the cause of the arrest which terminates 
a stem by the development of a flower, this obolarian form is of 
great €— ges cases being equally inherent. 
. Y. vic., Bryn Mawr = rk at Palmer Av., chestnut, typical 
baag hae Pico xx 4), 1896-190 905 ; brook-bank, Se. 17,'98 ; under SM Rocks, Se. 25, 
,'98; Park Hill, Oc. 10,'98; Mosholu, 8 in high, Jun. 26, 1905. 
**"*SPORTS 
Individual plants displaying some remarkable and unexplained 
peculiarity ; perhaps different examples are to be interpreted as 
a, reversion to an ancestral character ; or, 
6, saltatory variation, involving points of new departure from 
the type; due to unusually intense action of the tendency to 
variation [written in 1897, before mutations had become so well 
accredited as now]; or, to 
c, hybridization ; 
d, alteration due to insect-puncture ; 
