— 5- 



of the inner wall, but a corrugated surface with alternate parallel 

 ridges and grooves, the ridges continuing the spiral airection of the 

 fibrils, being lower and less sharp in section though very much closer 

 than the fibrils which they supplant. Russow did not differentiate 

 these corrugations, except as to number, from the fibrils. A 

 branch stripped of its leaves is easily examined with reference to 

 this point, as it is generally possible to focus through the cortical 

 cells without further cutting. 



The type specimen of the species was from Kamchatka. For its 

 North American distribution it is for the most part a coastal plant, rang- 

 ing on the east coast from Newfoundland southward to Georgia, Ala- 

 bama and Mississippi, and represented in a single collection from Cuba, 

 being found once as far inland as Indiana. On the West its distribution 

 is high northern, a couple stations on Alaskan islands forming with 

 two Kamchatkaii ones, one in East Siberia and a new one in Japan 

 (Aramaki, Rikuzen, 27-5-1909, leg. Nematsu, comm. lishiba) a some- 

 what isolated area, connecting neither through Asia nor North 

 America with the European-eastern-North-American field of more 

 general distribution. Another isolated area is represented at present 

 by a single recorded station, the island of Chiloe off the coast of 

 southern Chili. ^'^ This last almost siartling fact of specific distribu- 

 tion is matched by that of several other species of Sphagnum as we 

 shall see/-' Its European distribution agrees in general with its east- 

 ern North American, in that it is mostly coastal, though reaching as 

 far inland as the mountains of Styria in Austria, and that it does not 

 reach a very high northern latitude nor a high altitude. Most instruct- 

 ive as to its European habitat is the information and map furnished 

 by K. F. Dusen with reference to its Scandinavian provenience.^^' 

 The northern limit set by him for its distribution on the western coast 

 of Norway was somewhat confirmed by the experience of Kaalaas 

 and the author, who failed to find it in extensive collections made 

 along the coast of Sdndmbre in the summer of 1907, though Kaalaas 

 reports collecting it once previously in Orstenvik a trifle further north 

 than Dusen' s limit. 



The species may be sought anywhere along our eastern coast in 

 usually compact masses of not over robust plants, often tinged brown- 



(1) Cf. Braithwaite, Sphagnaceae of Europe and North America, 35. 1880. 



(2) Braithwaite's statement of the collection of fertile (fruiting ?) specimens of this 

 species by Capt. King in Chiloe may rest upon a wrong identification. 

 At any rate a specimen (fruiting) from the Mitten collection now in the herba- 

 rium of the N. Y. Botanical Garden labelled ""S. cymbifolium , Chiloe, Captn. 

 King" is >S'. magellaiiicum, the characteristic species of Iriopfiloea in that region. 



(3) Om Sphagnaceernas Utbredning i Skandinavien, 52, jf. lOS, 121/. Upsala, 1887. 



(4) Brvophyten in Romsdals Amt. (Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrifter, No, 7 

 1910) 42. 1911. 



