Local Flora Notes 



Jasione and Croton 



Jasione montana L. Many recent reports, collections by both 

 amateurs and professional botanists, and my observations of this 

 campanulacious weed indicate that it is firmly established in our 

 local area. Of the regions outside the Torrey range there are two 

 representatives in the Britton Herbarium of the N. Y. Bot. Gd. from 

 Conanicut Island, R. I.: J. F. Collins (1895) and ex herb. W. M. 

 Canby (1899). The former coUector, in an article in the Bull. Torr. 

 Bot. Club 23: 212, 213 (1896), records that the Sheep's-bit had 

 been observed for at least live years, and that it covered several 

 acres. The author adds these New England stations: Reading, 

 Mass. (only a few plants, fide W. H. Manning), and a doubtful 

 station at Boston Back Bay Fens. Scorgie, in Rhodora 4: 199 

 (1902), reports a single plant at Wareham, Mass. "The Catalogue 

 of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Connecticut" by L. Andrews 

 and others (1910), reports it in Plainfield (a few plants) and in 

 East Lyme. Two New York City records are dated 1879; Eighth 

 Avenue and Harlem River, Manhattan; Hunter's Point, L. I. 

 Both ballast collections are by Addison Brown, who reported them 

 in the Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 6: 357 (1879). These two records, 

 like that from Girard Point, Philadelphia (collected on ballast by 

 Isaac Burk, probably about the 60's), are historical; within the 

 city limits I saw last year a few stray specimens of Jasione in the 

 Springfield Gardens section of Queens. It grows more abundantly 

 a short distance east, at Valley Stream. The material from Long 

 Island at the N. Y. Bot. Gd. is all from Suffolk Co. : Laurel, 

 June, 1925, Ferguson #3912; Oakdale, July, 1933, M. M. Ken- 

 nerly, Shinnecock Hills, June, 1938, Moldenke #10625; Hampton 

 Bays, August, 1938, Muenscher & Curtis #6511; Southampton, 

 September, 1938, Monachino. But my Long Island observations of 

 this adventive have been in all its counties, appearing either as 

 waifs or, not infrequently, in large conspicuous colonies of exclusive 

 and vigorous growth. 



The Sheep's-bit is no less ambitious in New Jersey. Bayard 

 Long, in Rhodora 21: 105-108 (1919), "Jasione montana a con- 

 spicuous weed near Lakewood, N. J.," reports "at least a dozen dis- 

 tinct stations .... some of tbousands of plants, some of few" near 



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