ASTER AMBIGUUS 293 
Diversity of flowering-time is much more marked in the remoter 
lower ignit which therefore assume each more the proper 
form of a corymb. 
buda pale, but the dark-green tips conspicuous. Bracts 
acutish at apex or broad-bevelled, broadly scarious along the 
margins, smooth-backed but retaining some ciliation along the 
margins. 
The allied species A. vittatus resembles this in having also a 
smooth red stem. A. ambiguus differs in its broader leaves, differ- 
ent bracts, long upper internodes, straight stem, straight high- 
angled branches, a sinus continuing 24 the distance up the stem, 
not 44; more ciliate-bracts, with broader scarious margins, and 
more determinate blossoming, many heads being but sessile buds 
when their central heads are in flower. 
Small plants within thick woods may develop but a single con- 
vex tuft of heads, but retain the red stem and remoteness of the 
small upper leaves (Yonkers and Dunkirk). 
Habitat, wood-borders and fence-rows, Catskills and L. Erie 
to the Potomac, chiefly in late July and in August. 
Examples : 
Y. vic., Yonkers, Diller rocks, in woods, July, '97, strangled by Amphi- 
carpaea since ; open crags near, 1903-5. 
N.: Y., Catskills, rape bankside, fence-row, p" east bridge over Scho- 
harie Cr., Se. 5 99; uplands of Colonel's Chair Mt., Se. 6, '99; near Kaaterskill 
Junction in head of Stony mum Se. 7, 99. 
W. N. Y., Dunkirk, Pt. anos, center of woods, July, '99. Cattaraugus 
Resn., Indian Twin Brook, Au. 3, '96. 
Pa.? probably was the source (like many others of Bernhardi's plants) of the 
Erfurt-Breslau plant of 1818-1821 or earlier, from which came Nees' specimen in hb. 
Gray; see p. 294; and probably the existing Bernhardi specimen in hb. Mo. 
Gar. and the Turin plant of 1821. 
D. C., near Washington, July 29, '79 and '80?, Z. F. Ward as A. macro- 
AAyllus in hb. Bu. 
History. The first knowledge of a specimen of Aster ambiguus 
leads us to the botanical garden of Erfurt, in Prussian Saxony, where 
the plant was cultivated by the director Bernhardi and was named 
by him Aster ambiguus, probably because of doubt as to its affinity. 
Probably the date was later than 1808, or the plant would have 
appeared in the bat part of the catalogue of the Erfurt garden 
at year. Perhaps its non-appearance in 1818 in the Syxopsis 
Asterum of Bernhardi's friend Nees, indicates that it did not come 
to Bernhardi's observation before that year. It must, however, 
have been very soon after it, if not before, for Bernhardi's Aster am- 
