184 LEAFLETS. 



height of the foliage. The capsules of these are about three- 

 fourths of an inch long in the longest. The real K. Bernardi 

 is, then, a strongly characterized mutate. 



The plant I had from Eock Co., Wis., from Mr. Bernard 

 Saunders in 1897, is intermediate between V. Bernardi and the 

 parent species. 



V. PEBPEKSA. Tall and slender, even at petaliferous flower- 

 ing 8 or 9 inches high and with peduncles and petioles of equal 

 length, all slender, glabrous or nearly so : leaves small in pro- 

 portion, thinnish, broadly subcordate in outline, deeply cleft, 

 or the small earliest only subserrate-toothed or lobed, the seg- 

 ments of all the later regular and eyen, a little falcate, the lower 

 margin of each apt to be serrate-toothed ; largest summer foliage 

 3 inches wide near the base, the length a trifle less, all the veins 

 and even now and then the leaf-surface strigulose-hirtellous, 

 most so beneath, sepals oblong-lanceolate, acutish, very lightly 

 and delicately ciliolate : apetalous summer flowers on short very 

 slender prostrate and even sometimes hypogeous peduncles: 

 petaliferous flowers often fertile, their oblong capsules middle- 

 sized. 



The type specimens as to early state are on U. S. Herb, sheet 

 441,069, and were collected on a moist prairie at Dunning, near 

 Chicago, 111., 18 May, 1902, by Dr. H. S. Pepoon. There is 

 another from Ottawa, 111., by C. P. Johnson, May, 1889, and a 

 third from " Low prairies, Dupage Co.," 111., by Dr. W. S. Mof- 

 f att ; all these from the same region roundabout Chicago. But 

 the plant was first known to me as seen and collected by myself at 

 Dixon, 111., from a low prairie, 18 June, 1898. I incautiously label- 

 led the aTpecimenaV.Bernardi, not so much overlooking the almost 

 or quite hypogeous nature of their summer flowers as suspecting 

 that this might prove to be a character of that plant, the sum- 

 mer flowers of which were not then known. It was from a view 

 of these specimens of mine, labelled wrongly V. Bernardi, that 

 the character of the summer peduncles was taken by Mr. Pollard 

 for his account of V. Bernardi in Britton's Manual. 



I doubt that V. perpensa has any intimate relation to V. 

 pedatifida ; but I find it convenient to name and define it here, 

 as having been mistaken for that evident mutation, V. Bernardi. 



