MIDLAND NATURALIST. 65 
while most common in low ground bordering swamps, has for an 
alternative situation upland rocky woods in the shade of sugar 
maples. 
It is a part of the common experience of field botanists that 
most plants of any rarity, or special interest are always to be sought 
each in some preferred soil and other points of environment, and 
there associated with almost always about the same list of con- 
comitant species belonging to other alliances. Striking exceptions 
to this general rule may perhaps not be found so rare as we have been 
accustomed to think, especially when marked species like this 
which have a wide distribution, shall have been studied ecologically 
throughout the whole of their exstensive range. But I doubt 
if any other North American plant will be found to occur under 
such extreme diversity of conditions as this one does, and that, as 
I suppose Cypripedium acaule does, without evincing any considerable 
diversity morphologically. 
One botanical friend, much given to ecologic research, ex- 
pressed a feeling of surprise at my account of this cypripedium, and 
wondered if the seeds, for example, of the high-northern bog plant 
would so much as germinate in the low sultry Potomac valey 
habitat. 
4 
The Name Stemonitis a Synonyme. 
FA. NixowLANB. 
Taking as the fundamental rule for the nomenclatnre of plants 
that no names be accepted that antedate May, 2, of the year 1753, 
when the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus was edited, it must be 
shown that the name Stemonitis Gleditsch, 1753, was published 
later than the above date of Linnaeus’ work, or the name as 
attributed to that author will not hold, assuming that date as the 
starting point for names of slime moulds. In some of the common 
texts* the genus is written Stemonitis, (Gleditsch) Rostafinski, 
1873. The oldest name for the group of plants at present com- 
prised under the genus is that of Micheli, + Clathroidastrum, given 
* MacBride, T. North American Slime-Moulds (1 899.) 
Cooke, M. C. Myxomycetes of Great Brittain. (1877.) 
+ Adavson, M. Familles des Plantes, (1763) V oL Ti, p T. 
