■246 LEAFLBTS. 



ment with those of the real species of that name as to size, 

 form and color of the corolla, are distributed in the main to 

 axillary cymes. The whole number of flowers which the plate 

 shows is 25, of which 7 are in the terminal cyme, the 18 be- 

 longing to 3 lateral ones ; so that the whole number of the 

 flowers is distributed about as equally as possible among four 

 cymes mostly axillary. Considering that in plant species 

 generally characteristics of inflorescence are more stable than 

 those of the flower itself, and seeing that the whole accepted 

 system of the Apocynaceae — quite as in the case of each of a 

 hundred other families — would fall back into chaos should 

 inflorescences cease, as we may say, to bg sworn by, we are 

 forced to deny to this plant of Bigelow a place among possible 

 mere variations of A. androsaemifolium. But in the second 

 place I remark that the foliage of his plant is about as far as 

 can be from answering to that of the species aforesaid. So 

 far from being ovate, the leaves are nearly lanceolate and quite 

 slenderly acuminate. There is in them no suggestion whatever 

 of the foliage of androsaemum ; so that to no plant at all like 

 this could the specific phrase foliis androsaemi have been 

 applied. By characters of foliage alone, the plant figured by 

 Bigelow is something apart, not only from real A . androsaemi- 

 folium, but from every other member of the genus known to 

 me. Moreover, by the dimensions attributed to it by Bigelow 

 it is again a stranger to us, for he reports that it " grows often 

 to the height of five or six feet, though its common elevation 

 is three or four." Plants that are commonly received by the 

 botanists of to-day ior A. androsaemifolium, having truly ovate 

 and mostly obtuse leaves, if ever found two feet high, are 

 accounted very tall specimens, and many little exceed one and 

 a half feet ; and all these have more axillary than terminal 

 cymes, and are rather few-flowered. Unless the plant of 

 Bigelow was in his day limited to the environs of the lesser 

 Boston of a hundred years ago, and is now extinct, it should 

 fall to the lot of some Massachusetts botanist to discover it 

 anew, and give it a name, and a place in the list of northeastern 

 dogbanes. 



