1912] Setchell: Studies in Nicotiana 27 



Comes (1899, p. 54) indicates that he has seen it in the living 

 condition. Seed received from him failed to germinate in the 

 U. C. B. G., even after repeated trials. East (1912, p. 244) has 

 just stated that he succeeded in producing plants from Italian 

 seed and that these were so close as to seem of the same species 

 with a derivative of X. Bigelovii produced in the U. C. B. G., of 

 which East was furnished with seed. 



As to the wild plant, I have considerable doubt as to its ever 

 having existed. In various floras it is listed without special 

 comment, but very few specimens other than those from botan- 

 ical gardens are to be found in the herbaria and even such other 

 specimens are likely to have been from Indian cultivation. Some 

 of such specimens, however, are either robust X. Bigelovii or 

 X. multivalvis. Gray (1876, p. 546) suggests that it is merely 

 a cultivated variety of A'. Bigelovii to which it is very close in 

 ev r ery character except that of the four-celled capsule and its 

 tendencv to have more than five lobes to the corolla. My ex- 



perience with N. Bigelovii, especially U. C. B. G. 05, seems 

 thoroughly to support this statement, since X. quadrivalvis has 

 appeared in a pedigree of N. Bigelovii (cf. also East, 1912, p. 245 

 et seq.). 



Nicotiana multivalvis Lindl. 



This plant is more commonly assigned as a variety under X. 

 cjuadrivalvis, which it resembles closely except in the many- 

 celled indehiscent capsule, in which the cells are arranged in 

 both an inner group and an outer row and the many-lobed limb 

 of the corolla. In fact, N. multivalvis (cf. Lindley, 1827, pi. 



1057) seems like a monstrous form of N. Bigelovii. Yet it is 



90. 1M 



reproduced uniformly from the seed. U. C. B. G. 06 and 07 



have been grown for several years in the U. C. B. G., mostly in 



the pure line, giving constant results. Gray (1876, p. 546) 



suggests that "X. Bigelovii is perhaps the original of it," and 



I feel that he is right, since it has appeared in the pedigreed 



cultivation of N. Bigelovii in the U. C. B. G. 



X. multivalvis has been cultivated in botanical gardens since 



1826 (cf. Don. 1838, p. 467) and still persists. The first seed 



were procured by David Douglas (1836, p. 92), who obtained 



