240 PROCEEDINGS : BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
that in some of the specimens of this plant which Professor Greene 
has sent me not only are the habital and foliage characters as in 
that species, but the stolons are invested with many of the unique 
stipitate purple glands which are so characteristic of the young 
growths of A. parlinii. How so unusual a character in the genus 
as is this one could have so long escaped the attention of Professor 
Greene who made no mention of it in his descriptions and who 
kept separate from his plant A. parlinii is indeed hard to under¬ 
stand. 
V 
Leaving this question, though, we must return again for a 
moment to the fundamental one of the Linnaean Gnaphalium 
plantaginifolium. Professor Greene’s argument for calling this 
smooth-leaved species the Plukenet plant was that it had firmer 
leaves than the other, and consequently the basal leaves were more 
like plantain. But in this connection it should be noted that in 
his description of A. decipiens (the pubescent-leaved species), 
aside from the thinner texture and the pubescence of the leaf, he 
gives us no leaf differences. In fact, from his description, “ of the 
large dimensions, short stolons, broad petiolate triple-nerved leaves, 
and the general habit of A. plantaginifolia ,” one is led to infer 
that in size and outline the leaves are essentially the same. This is 
the case in specimens I have examined. A Louisiana specimen of 
his A. decipiens has the leaves practically as large as those he has 
sent me of what he called A. plantaginifolia which, in the accom¬ 
panying letter, he says show u uncommonly well the fully developed 
leaves.” The basal leaves of the two species are, then, alike in size 
and outline: their differences are alone those of color, pubescence, 
and texture. Professor Greene’s A. decipiens has the old basal leaves 
generally glabrate dull and often rusted or blotched with purplish 
or brown. A. parlinii has the basal leaves bright clear green and 
glabrous from the first. Even admitting Professor Greene’s state¬ 
ment that the leaves of the latter are more like plantain in texture, 
— a statement which, when one considers the variability of our 
commonest introduced plantain, is not entirely convincing,—one 
may perhaps be permitted to ask whether, if Plukenet had only 
one of these plants and did not know the other, he would make 
such a distinction ; and whether, in view of the figure and note 
which he published, it is not better to consider as representing Ids 
plant the species which has the greatest habital resemblance to his 
figure and which best matches the impression given by his descrip¬ 
tion “ Plantago Candida A. 
