FERNALD: ANTENNARIA IN NEW ENGLAND. 
247 
involucral bracts nearly all acute, the inner long attenuate. — Road¬ 
side, “ Davis Farm,” Seal Harbor, Mt. Desert Island, Me., July 9, 
1897 (E. L. Rand). 
A. campestris Rydberg. Plant forming dense closely appressed 
mats ; stems low, 1 dm. or less in height; stolons shorter and rather 
thicker than in the former : basal leaves broader, obovate-cuneate, at 
first loosely pubescent above, the pubescence soon nearly all 
deciduous, often leaving a narrow white pubescent border to the 
leaf: heads densely clustered, perhaps not becoming racemose.— 
Bull. Torrey bot. club, vol. 24, p. 304.— This has been considered a 
species confined to the prairies west of the Mississippi, but it is 
apparently a frequent plant in rather rich dry fields or even upon 
ledgy shores in northern Maine. The following Maine specimens 
have been examined: ledgy river banks, Houlton and Island Falls, 
and dry fields, Milo (M. L. Fernald). Further study may show this 
plant to be rather an extreme form of the preceding species, but 
from our present knowledge, it seems wisest to keep them apart. 
Aside from the surprising number of apparently distinct species 
which we have long overlooked—a case which, though an extreme, 
may be taken as a fair type of the questions which are frequently 
presenting themselves in American systematic botany — these Anten- 
narias seem to present some further problems of a biological 
character. The plants'are, so far as we know, dioecious; i. e., the 
individual plants bear only staminate or pistillate fiowers. The 
staminate fiowers, however, are not strictly without a trace of the 
pistil, for they have rudimentary thickened and undivided styles. 
The flowers having these undivided styles soon shrivel without pro¬ 
ducing akenes. In the other or pistillate fiow r ers, no stamens seem 
to be present, the elongated generally purple style is deeply 2-cleft, 
and abundant akenes are produced. From the foregoing descriptions 
it will be seen that all the species produce stolons, often in great 
abundance ; and by means of these offsets the plants very soon cover 
large areas of ground. The earliest flowering species, Antennaria 
neglecta , is perhaps the most abundant. It grows in barren fields or 
on sunny hillsides almost everywhere and fiowers in late April or 
early May. In this species both staminate and pistillate plants are 
very abundant. In the nearly related species, A. campestris , too, the 
staminate plants are apparently about as common as the pistillate. 
In one other species, A. plantaginea, a later plant than A. neglecta , 
staminate plants are sometimes found, though compared with the 
