PITTONIA. A SERIES OF PAPERS RELATING TO BOTANY AND BOTANISTS. HOWARD L. GREENE. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, 1887-1880. CONTENTS. EcHINOCYSTIS § MEGARRHIZA, WEST AMERICAN SPECIES OF TKIPOLU M WEST AMERICAN ASPERIFOLI*:, I, THE SPECIES OF ZAUSCHNERIA, A NEW GENUS OF ASTEROID COMPOSITE, NEW SPECIES, MAINLY CALIFORNIAN, MISCELLANEOUS SPECIES, NEW OR RARE, BOTANICAL EXCURSION TO THE ISLAND OF SAX MIGUEL, CATALOGUE OF THE FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE ISLAND < MIGUEL, - WEST AMERICAN PHASES OF THE GENUS POTENTILLA, WEST AMERICAN ASPEKIFOLMS, III, - AMERICAN POLEMONIACE.E, I, NEW OR NOTEWORTHY SPECIES, ----- BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF DR. ALBERT KELLOGG, NEW OR NOTEAVIM,. - -.11 BOTANICAL LITERATURE, OLD AND NEW, I, " II, BOTANY OF CEDROS ISLAND, LIST OF THE KNOWN SPECIES OF CEDROS ISLAND PLANTS, SPECIES OF DODECATHEON, ---..-• NEW OR NOTEWORTHY SPECIES, III, ----- CONCERNING THE MAKING OF MANY SYNONYMS, CONCERNING THE CITATION OF AUTHORS, - liT .L LITERATURE, OLD AND NEW, III, " IV, - SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THURE KTJMLIEN, A. M., A NEW BRICKELLIA (By E. R. Drew), VEGETATION OF THE SAN BENITO ISLANDS, - SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF CEDROS ISLAND PLANTS, CoNCEUNrNu SOME CALIFORNIA BAKOS Mn-LLEii ON EVKLY BINOMIALS, - NEW OR NOTEWORTHY SPECIES, IV, - PLANTS FROM THE BAY OF SAN BARTOLOMC:, ANALOGIES AND AFFINITIES, I, NEW OR NOTEWORTHY SPECIES, V, - BEMtNcs.'ENCEs OF MAJOR JOHN E. LECONTE (By .Mary (in PITTONIA. A SERIES OF BOTANICAL PAPERS. By Edward Lee Greene. ECHIXOCYSTIS £ MEGARRHIZA. That this group of plants, known to most American botan- ists as species of Megarrhiza, constitute a genus distinct from Echinocystis is a doctrine which has been nowhere very seriously defended. Dr. Kellogg was the first to suggest for them generic rank, publishing early in the year 1854 his *Mara muricata. But only one year later he brought out a second species not as a Mara but as an Echinocystis. In the sixth volume of Pacific Railroad Reports, published in 1857, in a catalogue of the plants of Williamson's Expedi- tion, the name Mc<i<irvhiz<i first appears in print; but no nglish name, follows the anglicised spoiling of it given in the King imes version of tl - ml his mistake is copied by 'atson and by Cogniaux. But the final aspirate in such Hebrew words turn ; but Dr. Torrey's name 1.. i! ority for the names of the two species indicates that he, at that time. was entertaining the thought of founding a g'iiu~ upon these plants ; an opinion which"it is evident that he shortly after- wards relinquished ; for only a few years later, in preparing his elaborate report upon the Botany of the Wilkes" Exploring Expedition he referred the same plants to Echhwcystis. As late as 1S75, two years or more after Dr. Torrey's death, Mr. Sereno Watson published in the Proceedings of the American Academy, what was indexed as a Revision of Mctjarrhiza : but this paper, so far from being the revision of a previously nost nearly allied. Cartage and Loasacea. fo nore striking differences in the character of . n a genus. To take the case of Menlzdiu, ;eeds, all the wav from nearly shapeless to th e-ss thiii) a hnlf- of ..ur lb-A ps of the mountains hack of Varaville. California f the same yellow when ripe. The soft spines uly as in the original specimen of Dr. Kellogg peduncles, moreover, in my plant are gradually thickened, and strongly so, under the fruit, so that possibly I am in- cluding two species under this name. SOME WEST AMERICAN SPECIES OF TRIFOLIUM. T. OLIVACEUM. Near T. Macrcei, 1-1| feet high, erect, with ascending branches, glabrous except a manifest appressed pu- bescence on the lower surface of the leaves : petioles an inch or two long, with lanceolate, acuminate, entire stipules : leaf- lets an inch long, cuneate-oblong, obtuse, lightly serrulate or • • : heads on elongated naked peduncles, hemis- pherieal in llower, an inch broad and I ugh : calyx-tube a line long, its slightly unequal linear-setaceous teeth 5—6 lines, densely plumose below, gradually less so above and nearly naked at the rather rigid tips : corolla deep violet-purple. only 2 lines long: legume sessile, not exserted from the calyx-tube, striate-nerveel, glabrous, 1-seeded. T. COLUMBIXOI. H ' ::g but rather smaller. silky-pubescent throughout: leaflets with merely crenulate margins: flowering heads conical, more than an inch high and somewhat less than an inch broad at base: calyx-tube less than a line long, the filiform segments 5 lines, soft and densely silky-plumose throughout: corolla li lines long, vex- ote, wings and keel deep purple: legume as in the last, but white-villous at apex. Both the above new clovers I found in May, l.s8<i, growing quite plentifully, by waysides and along the borders of fields, near the village uf V . miles north of San Fram-isco. But T. olima-urn had been brought by Mrs. Cur- ran, from the opposite side of the Sacramento valley near Penryn, two years before. They are annuals with a striking resemblance "to T. arremr, completely hiding their small corollas within the mass of elongated, silkj calyx-segments. The heads are of a rather h.L..; ..|i\t- green in the first species, and of a pale do specific names. slender but firm ascending branches : leaves short-petioled ; leaflets 3—5 long, linear-cuneiform, denticulate, truncate or retuse at apex, and cuspidate: stipules spinulose-lacerate : peduncles filiform, several times longer than the leaves, sup- porting a minutely involucrate 3-flowered umbel : involucres parted into 5—6 subulate segments which little exceed the short pedicels of the flowers : calyx broadly tubular, 2 lines long, scarious and at length transparent between the ten pungent teeth one-third as long as the tube : corolla small, purplish, not becoming inflated : legume 2 lines long, glab- rous, 2-seeded. A single specimen, by Mrs. Curran, from near Mr. Diablo, 1883, mixed with T. bifid urn, which it well resembles, although it belongs near T. paucifiorum. T. RUSBYI. Near T. long i pes : stems numerous, rather stout, decumbent, a foot high from a deep, somewhat fusiform perennial root: sparingly villous-pubescent: leaflets obovate to narrowly oblong, an inch or less long, obtuse, mucronate. serrulate, deep green above, pale beneath : spike oval or oblong, bracts of the rachis not bristly : flower salmon color. distinctly pedicelled and in age reflexed: calyx-teeth linear- lanceolate, villous-pubescent. Northern Arizona, collected by Lemmon and by Busby : also in the San Bernardino Mountains, Southern California, Parish. Well distinguished from T. longipes to which it has been referred, by its stout I r roots, the pal- lid lower surface of its leaves and different inflorescence. The roots of T. longirn's are slender and creeping : its head or spike is round-oval, the flowers sessile and never reflexed, and the rachis has bristly bracts. This is probably the T. T. EXILE. Near T. Pahiwri and of the same erect-sprea* un'eate-obovate, emarginate, or obcordate, mucronulate, de: iculate, the largest hardly more than 2 lines long : stipul elled •)-- 12-noi ered , j\ -ml. -h. .! < impanulat. halt the- Iliads as ft- engthwise) by the lonU- ier with a firmer texture (brittle when dry) i stipules and calyx, the teeth of the latter . longer, nearly equalling the young flowers. {tcraltiut, yet of most peculiar aspect, on account of its lacini- ate leaflets : but the best specific character is that of the long, several-seeded legume. SOME WEST AMERICAN ASPERIFOLI.E. Our commonest Pacific American ' Asperifoliae have been hitherto a fruitful source of synonymy; the fate of each species having here' to be published first as of one genus, then of another and another ; all of which implies either that the genera are hard to define, or that the true generic charac- ters which the plants furnish have been overlooked. In deal- ing with the earliest known species of them, the Old World botanists erred very naturally and excusably in applying to them those principles upon which the classification of tin (>ld World Asperifolise had been based. In Europe and in Asia the genera have floral characters, the corolla itsell some of the best: but not so here where, running through a long list of more than one hundred species u hich, by their differences of habit would seem likely to represent five or six good genera, the corolla is substantially one thing, the dif- ferences being so very slight as to teach that the diagnosis of that organ may almost be omitted as superfluous in descrip- tions whether of genera or of species : and the corolla in all this vast assemblage of Western North and South American plants is that of the mainly Old World genus, J///o.,o//s. WEST AMERICAN ASPERIFOLI.E. \) creased, and their fruits began to be more attentively con- sidered, it wTas found that they must be excluded from Myo- sotis. I apprehend that the difficulty which more recent botanists have experienced in dealing with them, has come of a too exclusive dependence upon certain of their fruit charac- ters. As authors of the early part of the century erred by looking to the corolla alone, so, it appears to us, those of fifty years later have gone astray by regarding too exclusively the surface and the insertion of the nutlets. Between the two it is hard to say wdiich of these kinds of character is the le<> available for generical distinctions. I account of both as nearly worthless for that purpose, in so far as relates to species which were until recently referred to Eritrichium. Assuredly what seems to me to be the most forced and artifi- cial genus that has been proposed in this alliance is Echidio- carya, having every aspect and every character of Plagio- hoihrys except that there is a stipe between the scar, or point of attachment to the gynobase, and the body of the nutlet.