THE TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB OFFICERS FOR 1910 President HENRY H, RUSBY, M.D. Vice-Presidents EDWARD S. BURGESS, PH.D. JOHN HENDLEY BARNHART, A. M., M.D. Το TORREYA is furnished to subscribers in the United States and Canada for one dollar per annum; single copies, fifteen cents. subscribers elsewhere, five shillings, or the equivalent thereof. Postal or express money orders and drafts or personal checks on New York City banks are accepted in payment, but the rules of the New York Clearing House compel the request that ten cents be added to the amount of any other local checks that may be sent. Subscriptions are received only for full volumes, beginning with the January issue. Reprints will be furnished at cost prices. Subscriptions and remittances should be sent to TREASURER, TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, 41 North Queen St., Lancaster, Pa., or College of Pharmacy, 115 West 68th St., New York City. Matter for publication should be addressed to JEAN BROADHURST Teachers College, Columbia University Vol. 10 TORREYA November, 1910 No. II NORTHWARD EXTENSION OF THE RANGE OF A RECENTLY DESCRIBED GENUS OF UMBELLIFERAE BY ROLAND M. HARPER One day in the fall of 1907 I was talking with Dr. Forrest Shreve about the peculiar distribution of certain coastal plain plants, and reference was made to Oxypolis filiformis (Walt.) Britton,* which ranges from North Carolina to Florida and Mississippi in the pine-barrens, with an outlying variety (Canbyi C. & R., Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 7: 193. 1900) in southern Delaware. Dr. Shreve then remarked that he had found this species the year before on the Potomac River near Hancock, Maryland; but I assured him that the occurrence of such a pine-barren plant among the mountains so far north was highly improbable,† and that his specimens were more likely Harperella nodosa Rose, a plant of very similar appearance, but easily distinguished by its involucres, fruit, time of flowering, and various other characters. This it is true was then known only from two counties in the coastal plain of Georgia and two in the coal region of Alabama, but the Alabama localities were along streams in the Cumberland Plateau, which is a direct continuation of the mountains of western Maryland, and a great many species of plants are common to the mountains of these two states. Not wishing to leave this interesting matter unsettled, I asked *Formerly referred to the genera Oenanthe, Sium, Tiedemannia, and Peucedanum, in most cases with the specific name teretifolia (um). †See Bull. Torrey Club 36: 584 (first paragraph). 1909. See Torreya 6: 112-114. 1906. The genus (originally described in Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. 29: 441. 1905) was then known as Harperia, but this was found to be a homonym, and Dr. Rose soon changed it to Harperella (Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 19: 96. 1906). [No. 10, Vol. 10, of TORREYA, comprising pages 217-236, was issued October 27, 1910.] Dr. Shreve to send me a specimen of his plant on his return to Maryland, which he did; and I deposited it in the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden. It was collected July 13, 1906, on gravel beaches of the Potomac River 11⁄2 miles west of Hancock, Md. Its oldest umbel was only a few days past flowering, so that the fruit characters were not well displayed, but it was evidently not Oxypolis, and I could see nothing to distinguish it from Harperella. It is considerably slenderer than my best specimens of the latter from Georgia, but no more so than those from the mountains of Alabama. There the matter rested until February, 1910, when a most interesting sequel developed. In trying to verify the report (current in botanical manuals) of the occurrence of Oxypolis filiformis in Virginia, I traced it back to Torrey & Gray (Fl. N. A. 1: 630. 1840, under Tiedemannia teretifolia), who cited a specimen from Harper's Ferry (which was then in Virginia, but is now at the eastern corner of West Virginia), collected by Dr. W. E. A. Aikin. (This locality is given as the northeastern limit of the species in all editions of Gray's Manual between that time and 1869, when Mr. Canby discovered in Delaware the variety which now bears his name.) As Harper's Ferry is on the Potomac River in the mountains, like Hancock, and only 35 miles southeast of that place, I at once suspected that this plant must be about the same as Dr. Shreve's. On looking up the specimen in question, which is still preserved in the Torrey Herbarium, I found that what there is of it agrees very well with the one from near Hancock, even to being in the same immature stage. But it is such a poor specimen, that it is no wonder that no one ever noticed any essential difference between it and the specimens of Oxypolis among which it had presumably been lying for seventy years or so. The main stem had been bitten off (as was noted on the label), and curiously enough this was the case with most of the type specimens from Georgia; which would seem to indicate that cattle are rather fond of this plant. No indication of habitat was given on Dr. Aikin's label, but it is reasonable to assume that it was collected on the shore of one of the two rivers which come together at Harper's Ferry. It seems rather strange that none of the numerous botanists who have explored the Allegheny table-lands between Maryland and Alabama between 1840 and 1905 should have found this plant. It ought to be in the proper condition for identification on the Potomac River in August or September, and in the Virginias and East Tennessee a little earlier in the season. Whether the Potomac River plant is what I suppose it to be or not, it deserves careful investigation, for it is certainly something far out of its usual range, if not an undescribed species. POSTSCRIPT. The foregoing was sent in to TORREYA on September 17th. Since then Dr. J. N. Rose, the author of the genus in question, has visited Hancock at my suggestion-after one of his assistants had been to Harper's Ferry in August without finding the desired plant-and he writes me that on October 5th he found a small patch of it just above high-water mark on the bank of the Potomac near that place, and collected flowering and fruiting specimens. He finds it very similar to my specimens from the mountains of Alabama, but is not sure now that those are identical with the original material from the coastal plain of Georgia. This implies that there may be two species of Harperella instead of one; a suggestion to which the considerable difference in habitat between the mountain and coastal plain plants lends weight. I ADAM IN EDEN OR NATURE'S PARADISE EXTRACTS BY JEAN BROADHURST (Concluded) CHAP. CVII. Of Tobacco. The Names. cannot understand that Tobacco was known before the discovery of the Weft-Indies, and if fo, it cannot be expected that I fhould tell you by what name the Greek writers called it, they being deceafed long before. It is called in Latin *** Nicotiana |