Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/96

86 ; stalks hairy; flowers blue, purple, or almost white; woods, common East. H. acutiloba (sharp-lobed hepatica), wild from Vermont, West, has pointed lobes to the leaves, sometimes five of them, and paler flowers."

We are not favored with the round-lobed hepatica in this vicinity, and can not say from observation how bright its flowers might be in the pure, clear atmosphere of this prairie-region; but it is true that the sharp-lobed species does not pale in comparison with the Eastern flowers of the A. hepatica, unless my memory has faded in the mean time. The blue we get is deeper than can be caught from the sky on our clearest April day. There remains little else upon which to hang the species except the shape of the lobes of the leaves, and this is exceedingly variable. Last spring a patch of a hundred blooms or more grew close by the retreating edge of a snow-bank, only a few feet from my window, and the little clusters of blossoms varied so much among each other that an unobserving person would look the second time to note the shades of color. The foliage in like manner varied, and in some instances it seemed that there was evidence enough in that one bed to overthrow the strongest belief in there being two species of American hepaticas. I say we do not have more than one species here, and that is largely due to the fact that it is easier for us to put them all under A. acutiloba than to try and distinguish the two. To say that the acute-lobed leaves are sometimes five-lobed, is no distinction. In the college herbarium is a specimen of the roundest of the round-lobed from Michigan, with this same characteristic. The greater number of sepals (seven to twelve) in the A. acutiloba, there being six to nine in the other, has little weight, especially if we examine the specimens of A. hepatica from Europe. In turning to "The Manual," it is found that Dr. Gray, of course, comprehends the situation, and adds the following "saving clause" at the close of the description of H. acutiloba: "Perhaps runs into the other."

One further observation upon the hepatica, and then we will hasten on to other and quickly following April flowers. One plant of the A. acutiloba was found, the calyx of which was unusually small and dark blue, while the involucre was larger than ordinary. A closer examination revealed that these flowers were pistillate, and only vestiges of stamens could be found, and these in only two of the many flowers. The pistils, thirty-five to fifty in each flower, were about double the average number in ordinary blossoms. The plant seemed to be quite generally "off the track." The involucre of one flower had a fourth leaf (the ordinary number being three), which resembled a sepal in form and bright color. One of the three green leaves of the same involucre, instead of being of the normal entire form, was trilobed at the tip, giving it a strong resemblance to a leaflet of the meadow-rues (Thalictrian), an adjoining genus. Upon looking up this interesting unisexual tendency in the hepatica, it was found that Dr. S. Calloni