ASTER MOLLESCENS 231 
by syncopation of pedicels ; this was not a dry-weather shorten- 
ing of some single season, but was shown by the plants from the 
same rootstocks successively in ’98, '99, and 1900. Some of the 
Syncopate form had become still further modified into the Reni- 
form form, the tendency to shortening now affecting the leaves as 
well as again increasing in the inflorescence, and producing as 
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FiG. 44. 
distinctly reniform leaves as are to be found in any North Ameri- 
can aster. 
The balance of characters, and its limited occurrence so far as 
yet observed, suggest that A. mollescens is a specialized branch 
derived from the prolific stem of A. Claytoni in not a very remote 
past. Weakening of vitality seems to have attended (or caused ?) 
its own derivatives, the Syncopate and Reniform variants, and I 
should have expected them to die out, irrespective of building 
operations which have hurried them toward extinction in their 
original locality. 
