CHELONE GLABRA,—~-TURTLE- HEAD. I 87 
parted ; and the corol'a, though of but one petal, is also usually 
five-lobed. This shows that the normal structure of the flower 
is pentamerous, or formed on a plan of five, and that it is only 
by a union or suppression of parts that we have the forms we 
see. Even when we come to study the species as well as the 
genus, the relation of one form to the other is found so close as 
to make the line of distinction very uncertain. In the earlier 
times Linnzeus described two species. One, our present Chelone 
glabra, is thus described by Willdenow, “leaves lanceolate, ser- 
rate, petiolate ; the upper ones opposite.” The other C od/igua 
is said to have “leaves lanceolate, serrate, petiolate opposite.” 
It is not surprising, therefore, that succeeding botanists were in 
doubt about them. Professor Wood does not refer to C. cdligua 
even as a synonym, as Dr. Chapman in his Southern Flora, and 
Dr. Gray in his Manual of 1867, do,—but the latter in his 
“Synopsis” of 1878, again carries it back to its Linnzan position 
as a distinct species, giving a character not mentioned by Will- 
denow, that in C odd7gua the bracts are “ciliolate,” while in our 
species he says they are “not ciliate,” meaning perhaps “cilio- 
late,” or having a few short or scattered bristles along the mar- 
gins of the bracts, which are probably variable after all. Lindley 
and Mooré’s Treasury of Botany says, “The so-called C. e/abra 
is now regarded as but one of the forms of C. od/igua,” but if 
one name has to be dropped, it should be the latter in accord- 
ance with the practice of American botanists. A. L. de Jussieu, 
a distinguished French author of the end of the last century, and 
one of the fathers of modern Botany, tells us C. e/adra was the 
earliest name, and that the character of the whole genus was 
drawn from this species. That the species has “many forms” 
American botanists know. Mr. Coleman finds one in the South- 
ern Peninsula of Michigan with leaves only between a quarter to 
half an inch wide, which he calls variety “linifolia.”. The flowers 
are also variable in color. It is often pure white, and again it is 
frequently found of the rosy tint we have given in our plate, 
which is from a Pennsylvania specimen. 
