Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club/Volume 5/01

BULLETIN
OF THE
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB.
Vol. V. ]	New-York, January 1874.	[ No. 1.

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§ 68 Regel on the Species of Vitis. — E. Regel, in Garten Flora; for July 28, 1873, publishes a revision of the species of Vitis from North America, Northern China and Japan.   Our grapes have always been a puzzle to botanists, and it may interest the readers of The Bulletin to see what disposition has been made of our species by one who studies them in comparison with those from countries nearly related botanically.

Taking the species as they are enumerated in Torr. & Gray's Fl. N. Amer., I give in brief Regel's views of them.

V. bipinnata, Torr. & Gray's Fl., I., p. 243, he has as V. arborea, Linn.

V. incisa, Nutt., in Torr. & Gray, is left undisturbed.

V. indivisa, Willd., is placed as V. heterophylla, var. α, cordata.

V. Labrusca, in its many forms, is disposed of in three varieties: α, typica, β, æestvalis and γ, lanata, the first two of which have several sub-varieties.   In his arrangement V. candicans, Englmn., in Smithson. Contrib. III., 5, p. 32, and V. mustangensis, Buckl., in Proc. Phil. Acad., 1861, p. 451, would both be V. Labrusca, α, typica, c, ficifolia, and our V. æstivalis Michx.; Torr. & Gray, is V, Labrusca, β, æestvalis.

V. æstivalis, Michx.; Torr. & Gray: See V. Labrusca.

V. cordifolia, Michx.; Torr. & Gray: See V. vulpina.

V. riparia, Michx.; Torr. & Gray, was by Dr. Gray in his Manual reduced to a variety of V. cordifolia, and Regel has it as V. vulpina, ε, riparia.

V. vulpina, Linn.; Torr. & Gray, Regel makes four varieties, his var. α, rotundifolia includes our V. vulpina, and our V. cordifolia is his var. β.

The following is Regel's conspectus of our species, which will serve to show, in brief, the characters upon which his classification is based:

A.  Inflorescence cymose, Petals spreading ill flower, soon deciduous.

  a.  Cymes from opposite the leaves from the shoots of the current year.

  * Leaves pinnate or pinnately compound.

  1.  Vitis arborea, L.

  ** Lower leaves three-lobed, upper three-foliolate.

  2.  Vitis incisa, Nutt.

  *** Leaves entire or palmately lobed.

  3.  Vitis heterophylla, Thunb.

  b.  Cymes from the branches of previous years.

  4.  Vitis inconstans, Mig. (Japan and Himalayan sp.).

B.  Inflorescence thyrsoid, paniculate or rarely racemose; petals cohering into a calyptra which falls at flowering.

  a.  Leaves more or less hirsute on the veins below, or rarely all smooth.

  5.  Vitis vulpina, L.

  b.  Leaves all, or at least the younger, densely tomentose on the lower surface.

  6.  Vitis Labrusca, L.

The wonderful tendency of our vines to vary under cultivation seems to belong to them in the wild state, and one who has but a small suite of specimens is likely to be much more positive in his determinations than those who have collections made from widely separated localities.

Since the above was in type we learn from a note in the Gardener's Chronicle that Dr. Regel considers Vitis vinifera to be a hybrid between V. Labrusca and V. vulpina.   He bases this opinion upon the fact that V. vinifera is not found in a truly wild state, but only as an escape from cultivation, and that these species are natives of the countries where the cultivated grape originated.  It may be remembered that our grape growers who have experimented in the production of hybrids have found V. vulpina the most intractable of all in this respect.

G. T.

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§ 69 Two New Fungi from New Jersey. — Some time ago Mr. J. C. Martindale sent me specimens of the common dodder, Cuseiita Gronovii Willd. that were much hypertrophied.   Whole clusters of the flowers were swollen and elongated and parts of the stems were much enlarged.  The affected clusters were of a paler color than the unaffected, though in some cases the process of decay had advanced so far that the diseased plants had become dark-colored and were supporting a crop of that almost omnipresent blackish mold, Cladosporium herbarum Lk.  The inner tissues of the affected plants were all broken up, or destroyed, and the cavities filled by innumerable fungus spores, which in the mass were of a whitish color, but under the microscope were seen to consist of a pale or yellowish endochrome surrounded by a thick hyaline epispore.  Here was the secret of the strange appearance of the dodder.  It was nourishing a parasite within itself that was preying upon its vitals.  I do not find the epidermis ruptured in any of the specimens, from which it is probable that the fungus spores must wait for their liberation and dissemination till the decay of the enclosing walls of their habitation takes place.  This fungus is referable to the genus Protomyces, but is peculiar by reason of the abundant formation of spores in all parts of the affected plant.

Deeming it a new species, I take great pleasure in dedicating it to its discoverer.

Protomyces Martindalei  Pk. — Host plant swollen, slightly discolored; spores abundant, produced in all parts of the host plant, always covered, globose, whitish in the mass, .0006—.0007 inch in diameter, epispore thick, hyaline.

Hab. Cuscuta gronovii Willd.   Near Camden, New Jersey, Autumn.

Another scarcely less interesting fungus has been received from Mr. J. B. Ellis.   It is a Rœstelia on the leaves of Pyrus arbutifolia L.  It is remarkable for its effect upon the leaf tissues, forming them into a much thickened and peculiar subiculum, and, in the language of Mr. Ellis, “often transforming a leaf into a tubercular mass after the manner of Podisoma on the red cedar.”  This subiculum is composed of crowded subcylindrical or cornute projections united at the base in a common mass, each one bearing a single peridium at its apex.  I suspect that these projections may be less prominent in fresh specimens.  They are strongly suggestive, by their form not their texture, of the elongated peridia of Rœstelia cornuta Tul., while the true peridia, that surmount them, are lacerated into such fine filaments as to be suggestive of the peristomal fringe seen on the capsules of some species of Barbula.  I do not find this fungus described and, from the notes of Mr. Ellis and an examination of the dried specimens, have drawn up a description under the very appropriate name given by its discoverer.

Rœstelia transformans  Ellis. — Spots red; subiculum much thickened, produced into tufts of crowded subcylindrical or cornute processes, red or brownish, sometimes transforming an entire leaf; peridia at the apices of the projections of the subiculum, finely lacerated, whitish, the cells linear, minutely papillose; spores subglobose, minutely roughened, brownish, .00065—.00075 inch in diameter.

Hab. Leaves of Pyrus arbutifolia L.  Newfield, New Jersey.  October.

C. H. Peck.