THE FERN BULLETIN 



47 



sembles large forms of Lyco podium inundatum. In 

 any region where it grows a lack of moisture, or ex- 

 posure to sun, may cause the leaves to be less spread- 

 ing and thus provide the extremist with an excuse for 

 dubbing it a new species as L. adpressum, and if some 

 slip in its internal make-up should cause it to (level;);) 

 several half-fertile, half-sterile fruiting spikes — a sort 

 of fasciation, probably — then we have the added ex- 

 cuse for giving it the form name. As to the plant it- 

 self, being but an abnormal fasciated form, it is likely 

 to be found anywhere where the normal plants grow. 

 Until recently it was known from Southern Staten 

 Island, only, but Mr. Severin Rapp has since found it 

 at Sanford, Florida and it is doubtless growing at 

 many places between these two points. Those who do 

 not despise the variations exhibited by plants should be 

 on the watch for it. 



In the writer's opinion, the normal plant is itself a 

 mere ecological form ; a northern extension of the 

 well-known southern fox-tail club-moss (L. alopecu- 

 roides). As long ago as 1878 it was recognized by 

 Chapman as being different from the type of alopecu- 

 voidcs and he called it L. inundatum variety elongatum 

 and also L. inundatum variety appressum. In 1000 

 Lloyd and Underwood, putting a finer point on all the 

 Lycopodiums called it Lycopodium adpressum. Then 

 a year later Maxon, browsing around in some ancient 

 literature discovered that Desvattx had used the name 

 appressum for a form of another species of Lycopo- 

 dium about a hundred years earlier and our plant was 

 forth-with christened Lycopodium Chapmani. If the 

 matter were worth while we might challenge Maxon's 

 right to change the name so long as appressum and ad- 

 pressum are not spelled alike — upon such slender hairs 



