gostei. age
rs Bae eae
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go eae ate
mais ey

CONTRIBUTIONS

to
WESTERN BOTANY,

No. 13

NEW SPECIES AND NOTES.

Cheilanthes gracillima var. aberrans Jones is a form of C.
Fendleri with pectinate-toothed scales and approaches C. myri-
ophylia.

Gilia Wrightii. Gr. My No. 5247,from Springdale,Utah, is a
low shrub having the appearance of being biennial or sho rt-
lived. The heads are subcorymbose or single, and with leaves

_ rarely all entire. Flowers smaller than in the variety described
below, about 4” long, bracts wider, mostly lanceolate, other-
wise as in the variety. This also includes my No. 52 7n from
Pahria Canon Utah, also from LaVerkin Utah and probably
the material from Elk Ranch on the upper Virgin river at

_ polycladon belong in Heugilia. Gilia chess is closely allied
to G. Wrightii Pea with linear anther

Gilia Wrightii var. pectenisecta. n. var. This is my No.
10464 from Mack Colorids May 27 1908, growing on shelving
rocks among junipers. It is a low shrub, 6-12’ high, tufted
with many slender and erect stems 4-12’ high, simple above,
minutely woolly, leafy to the top and with a single leaf sub- —
tending the mostly solitary and dense head. Leaves all pin-
cy divided from the base or at least with no lobes arising

2

above the middle, Sib ied leaflet the longest, lobes 6’’-2” long,
4-1” wide, neatly smooth and green, acerose and rigid. The
order of lobing is the reverse of that in G congesta where the
leaves are lobed above the middle. Bracts and bracteal leaves
conspicuously. white-woolly with long and pointed flat hairs,
the edges of the nearly linear bracts seemingly pectinate be-
cause of the dense hairs along the edge, tips of the bracts and
calyx lobes green and smooth and acerose. Calyx about 5”
long. Corolla about 6” long, with widely spreading, entire,
obovate, and water-lined lobes 3’ long, white. Some speci-
mens have leaves with lobes 1-3” long. Stems nearly equably
leafy to the tip. My No. 10583 from Grand Junction May 22,
1895, is more andes and more ashy.

Gilia cosa var. ambigua n. var. Slender, erect, widcte

¢c ‘Heads small.. Flowers blue, 5-6” long. Anthers
vont elliptical, exserted. Leaves entire, Aaezcsel dolly
mostly throughout. Plants about a foot high. Victor, Cali- _
foes May 17 og N. 10011, also No. 9917 from Bear Valley,
California, July 19, 1900.

Gilia virgata var, Ya ageri. n. var. Plants slender, widely
and much branched. Heads small. Flowers blue, 6-9” long, —
with broad oval and lined lobes. Anthers broadly linear.
Leaves entire or with one or two pairs of lobes at base. iis
is the desert form. Skull Valley Arizona No. 10250, Palm
Spring California No. 10249 Wickenberg Arizona No. 10253, —
- Franconia Arizona No. 9918, Moapa Nevada No. 9919, Hill-
_ side Arizona No. 10279, Congress Junction Arizona No. 10251.
I regard the types as Nos. 10279 and 10253. Also I refer here
No. 9936 from Yucca Arizona May 17 1884, La Verkin Utah
No. 5189q and 5194, Springdale Utah No. 51211, Yager’s north
of Tucson Arizona No. 9935, Rio Tonto Basin Arizona No.
9934.

Gilia arenicola n. sp. Needles California May 3 1884 No.
10447, Kelso California May 2 1906 No. 9955, growing in sand.
- Also gathered by Mrs. Brandegee in the Mojave region. Sec-
_ tion Dactylophyllum. Lower leaves opposite, upper alternate,

all about 6” long, mostly forked above the middle, sometimes
3-lobed near the base, each lobe 1-nerved, and the base 2-3-
nerved according to the number of lobes, rigid, acerose, green,
ciliate. Internodes short and the whole plant congested, 1-2’

not reduced above, bracteal ones the same. Flowers apparently

3

' vespertine after the fashion of Section Linanthus, ereare-col-

than the stamens: style shorter than the stigmas. Pods ellip-
tical, filling the calyx, many seeded. Seeds oblong, angular,
very smal!, much curved, reticulate-lobulate, with a close coat
and without mucilage or spiricles, reniform. Embryo white,
strongly curved, in copious albumen. Radicle about twice as
_ long and about as wide as the cotyledons. This lper just
, intermediate between the two sections Linanthus and Dactyl-
, ophyllum. I refer to the type also No. 124572 Univ. of Califor-
}nia from Waterman, Cal., collected, I suppose, by Mrs. Bran-

€.
Gilia campanulata Gray. This evidently belongs to the
Dactylophyilum section instead of Eugilia where Gray put it:
»Pedicels sometimes nearly 1’ long. Thes species extends south
to the Amargosa desert. Its relationship with G. Parryi and
demissa is evident. Gilia filiformis also belongs between this
and Linanthus and not in ;

ox Douglasii var. salina n. var. Whole plant whitish
but smooth, bases of leaves mostly with a few hooked prickles
Por very stiff hairs which are reflexed. Leaves rigid, fles hy, 3-67 .
long, 14-1” wide, with short and ee prickle, edges a trifle
reyoiute and so the leaf seems 3-nerved, linear or rarely some
-of them oh iide te tecglate soudbtanes fatbastety roughened when
/young. Stems densely cxspitose and with imbricated leaves.
Flowers mostly single and terminal, on short and leafy
branches. se te linear, 4”” long, cleft to the middle, not at ail

lobes which are wonee rigid acerose linear and ere Corolla
ro” long, with purple throat and white and nearlv ‘orbicular
lobes 3” long. Stamens pgilen aes Stamens and style not

herry Creek Nevada July 13 1891 and jane 1 19 1906, Nos.
ak and 9982. as
In ae Agathe borages ae writer is Jet pevebeurie as to” Bee

4

his opinion that they are not valid. He is equally doxbtful as
to the validity of the proposed species, but they seem to be
good.

Krynitzkia mensana n sp. (Oreocarya). This may be a

Krynitzkia oblata n sp. (Oreocarya). Tufted perennial,
1-144° high. Leaves oblanceolate, acute, 3-5” long, on mar-
gined petioles longer than the blades, papillate, green, shortly

pubescent with some fine and some coarse short and appressed -

lairs, stems and inflorescence shortly hispid with widely
e

, +-0” long. Corolla about a quarter longer
than the calyx, limb 2” wide, tube 4-6” long. Fruiting calyx

broadly ovoid, 3-4” long, lobes triangular, not reflexed nor

Opening. Nutlets abruptiy arched in the middle to 80° (like -
1

those of O. suffrutescens), 1” high, forming an oblate sphere,
) ivex, very tuberculate and somewhat rugose in
the middle, shining, angles very sharp and thin with a rudj-

d

~

No. 3759 El Paso Texas, April 23, 1884. Peach ‘Springs, Ari-
zona, No. 6684, May 26, 1884 ;

multicaulis yar. setosa n var. Pedice!s stout.’

i

CPSU Ee Neate eS Peas Ferg CONTEST AMS NEST TT Ot
Fae

5
and about 1%” long. Sepals 3” long. Pubescence never yellow.
Sete about 1” long and less dense. Nutlets like the type but
with a very faint line of scarcely visible Ri near each
margin. Plants 6-8’ high, erect. Calyx explanate. pees
cence of very short spikes, uniserial, of 3-5 flowers. Coro
very short and small, 2-3” long, white, gee he Near For

_ Cove Utah ue 27 1901, growing under jun

a multicaulis var. abortiva. ewer Pitt. 3 114.).
This is a well aaa variety abundantly eee with the

type by intergrades from New Mexico to Arizona. The pe-
uliar incurving of ene nutlets oo by SEP is charac-
teristic of the species as well, “peculiar a pee projec-

tion” of the SA Aa side of Sie ee not exist, it is the usual
abrupt ending of the ventral keel common in the whole multi-
caulis group. The keel rises higher as it approaches the base
of the nutlet when it ere abruptly into the transverse scar
which is set in a deep re

Krynitzkia siete var. Virginensis n. var. Biennial,
many-stemnied, erect. F ubescence of leaves very dense and

row wing all around, ventral side rugose and with a igtoe

white edge surrounding the su butake groove which ends

transverse line a quarter of the wa y. from the base. Pedicels
3-4” long. This is No. 5195a from Es Verkin Utah May 8 1894
at 3500° alt. 4 would also refer to this No, 5124 from Dia-
mond bailar

it fate deason sp. (Oreocarya). Densely cxespi-

tose Saecia Root leaves many,- dense ely tomentose and
appressed strigose, spatulate, 1-2’ long, petioles very broad and
-as long as the blades. imbricated and long-hairy. - Spikes near-
ly simple, barely surpassing the leaves, and with flowers

pearing as if whorled, and on short and stout pedicels %- 1”

long. Calyx broadly ovate, 2” long, open, with triangular
lobes, densely pubescent but not evidently setose. Corolla 2’

long, white, as long as the calvx, limb 2” wide. Nutlets del-_

‘back concave below and slightly keeled above, closely tuber-
Ged all over, a few of the ss raised tah ra oles ide step

o

_ nous forms of K. barbigera. 1-2°

6 é
scar going to the base and occupying about a third the face, and
open. This plant is readily mistaken for K. fulvocanescens

_. Krynitzkia fulvocanescens var. Idahoensis n. var. Racemes
- few flowered and loose. Pedicels 2-4” long. Calyx lobes linear,
- 4.5” long, apparently not opening when ripe. Nutlets finely

and deeply petinate-rugose but not transversely rugose, dorsal -

zkia mixta nsp. This may be one of the multitudi-

scorpioid in age, the fruits contiguous, spreading.

3, No. 3832 May-6 1884. Meadow Valley Wash Nevada
April 28 1904. One nutlet is apparently firmly attached to the
gynobase.

_ Axrynitzkia decipiens n, sp. (Cryptanthe). This scems to:
_ be intermediate between dumetorum and angustifolia, and

closely approaches intermedia. Slender annual with filiform
bractless spikes 3-87 long in twos or threes 1
papillose, 1-27 long. Flowers not over 1” long and minute. It
has the calyx of K. oxycarya, 12-2” long, lobes filiform, green,

Se

2

7
spreading at tip, erect, appressed, oblique. -Nutlet 1, ovate-
lanceolate, Soy faintly papillose but more evident above,
Jes open at base, attached nearly to the top, 1” long, ob-
. tuse-angled. Pa ee appressed and short. he type is
my material from Yucca Arizona May 14 1884. Other material
is from Hackberry Arizona, Darwin Cal., Meadow Valley
WwW age ae vada.
3 _ Plagiobothrys humifusa n. sp. Thi s may be an extreme
_ form i tenellus. Annual, nearly prostrate, softly pubescent
= sales Radical leaves ovate, 6” long, nearly sessile.
te v l

slender spikes 3 long, all leaty. sear ok and loosely flowered

in fruit when the flowers are 6-9” apart below. Calyx nearly

hemispherical, 2’ long, open in fruit, lo fe triangular and calyx
cleft below the m iddle. Nutlets cruciform, onryed to a half

_ California 5000° alt. June 18, 1897. The roots secrete the usual
pee Bae but the — and leaves do not.

us n. sp. Habit of L. Burkei. Dense ly

ae epee stout ae coarse, 2° high. Lower petioles. often

; a foot long, upper often only an inch long. Stems and leaves

peoaesels pubescent with sperading hairs. Upper side of leaflets
% Leaflets about 7, 2-3’ long, spatulate-oblanceolate,

aoe nerved, green Stems simple ces nearly sessile,
very dense, about 6’ long. Flowers purple, 6” long, very
3 broad, keel not exserted; banner smooth. Calyx eer
spurred, on a slender and shaggy pedicel 6” long. Brac
4 Gee iiuccotite shaggy, 6-8” long, persistent. Pods abost
18” long, 6” wide, 5-0-seeded, shortly- Fda tae deere
fleshy, narrowly oblong, trianguiar-acute. Seeds 214” wae

light-colored. This grows on dry mountain slopes Middle Tem-
| perate life zone along with Geauga: and Prunus demissa.
alus lutosus n. sp. White River Utah next the Col-
_orado line, 5200° alt. May 29 1908, This grows on very

soil in white shale in the barest places where there is very lit-
tle soil. Perennial from a thick erect and fieshy root ee ‘at.

an inch or so beneath the surface puts out many slender and
scaly stems 1-4’ long. Flowers few, white, in a head ng oo is

2 ee

43

nearly sessile in the axils. Banner white, 4” high, arch ra a

8

bruptly to 45-80° at a place 2” beyond the calyx teeth, thin,
- sides reflexed most below and there for 1” wide, not at all at

° in a gentle arc, a trifle wider above and oblique at tip, :
notched a little on the lower side, rounded at tip, white, and ©
faintly purple-veined below. Keel

flat, lunate, the triangular tip

C yaline, reddish, much laterally compressed,

traight, de convex, not ob
fle contracted and a little oblique notched deeper above.. Teeth |
triangular, 4” long. Bracts triangular, as long as the short —

and stout pedicels, 1” long. Pods much inflated, cross section —
- triangular-reniform to round-reniform, ventral suture intruded

*

scattered black hairs (as well as calyx). Pods 1-1/2” long,
6-8” wide, cross section round or nearly so, much inflated, -
papery, on a slender stipe not as long as the calyx and not”
jointed to it, oblong-oval to oval-ov are
acute at tip and a little narrowed at base, sulcate about a

9°
deep ventrally, with ventral suture a trifle intrude sd, dorsally a
little suleate but without intruded suture. Calyx cylindrical,
about 3” long and 1%” wide, in flower the subulate teeth are
about 1” long. ‘This blooms very early, soon after the snow
leaves, in full fruit on May 25th. This is probably what Miss
Eastwood has called A anisus from western Colorado, but the
true anisus has never been collected except at Pueblo so far as
1 know. is species is certainly related to A. aboriginum
and Hookeri
Astr Saale detritalis n sp. Four miles above Theodore

Allied to A. simplicifolius. Caspitose in small mats, perennial,
from an erect and tapering taproot which at crown branches
into several thick and prostrate stems 1-2” long which are
densely clothed with closely imbricated hyaline nearly smooth
and oval stipular scales 3-4” long, which are acute and promi-
nently 1-nerved and adnate to the petiole. Whole plant ashy —
with very fine and appressed hairs. Leaves all radical, 2-3”
long, with slender and grooved green petioles and 2 pairs of
Kinear-oblanceolate sessile leaflets near ae BP. ae which are

ower and with stout pedicels 2” long in fruit, ascending, as
s the fruit. Bracts very large, hyaline, green nerved, triangu-—
lar, 3-4” long, about as long as calyx in flower, persistent.

- Calyx tube siort-cylindric, 2’ long, 142” wide, triangular at:
_ base and equally inserted, oblique at tip and much deeper cleft
- above, the arcuate subulate teeth as long as the tube and tlie
lower ones longer. Banner oblong-oval, earoiie. 4” long,

eral bands a line below the tip, banner arched in a gentle are
from tip to base and erect. Wings narrowly oblong, 112”
- wide, poenes’. flat to keel and obtuse, a line shorter than the
banner, 114” longer than the straight and very obtuse keel
which is lunate and boat-shaped and not abr ruptly erect 2S 1S
usual. Pods arcuate, 1’ long sessile, flat, 1 wide, flecked with
small brown spots, obliquely acute at tip, 1- -celled, manifestly
allied to A. simplicifolius but differing in the broad calyx, fone
pod, and flowers three times as large.
‘Astragalus Duchesnensis n sp. This may prove to be one
f the extreme ses of A. Jonchocarpes. -lants with the fili-

a 10

form and much branched underground stems of the A. diversi-
_folius group, loosely tufted with mostly a single stem to a~
branch of the root. Stems mostly flekuous, with internodes 1-2’
long. Whole plant including the pods but not the calyx ashy
_ with short and appressed hairs, but green underneath the pu-
_ bescence. Stems and peduncles fleshy and sulcate. Plants 1-22
high, racemosely branched from the base at 45° angles. Stip-
ules rigid, hyaline below, adnate, not connate, deltoid, the lower
ones 2-3” long, the upper much shorter and reflexed. Leaves
_ 2-4” long, of about 3 pairs of fieshy, linear, distant, obtuse, pet-
iolulate leaflets 4-1” wide and 6-9” long, the terminal one

eh i 4 3 o>

ay

with very short and deltoid teeth, not compressed. Flowers

~ fed to pink-purple, arched, 4-5” long. Banner oval, about 3”
he calyx, sides reflexed
vide, most in the middle, a little black-nerved above, emar-

ginate, a trifle longer than the wings, white spot-of about 6

broad, white bands, coming within 14” of the tip and sides, sul-
cus shellow and very broad. Wings lunate oblanceolate, 1’
wide, a little narrowed above, obtuse, arched about 45°, white,
entire, flat to the keel and about 1” longer. Keel with arched
base, tip very broad, incurved more than 90°, about 1” high,
black-purpie tipped, 2:4” longer than the calyx. Pods white

XT
pee
ao
et)
it
QO

a ag

i)
fe

ct

°
wo’
ca)
sess
te

Hs}

aQ

i)

i)
au

oO

pat)

bot

or)
—

nS
aye
5!

om.

_ pseudo-stipe or nearly sessile, arched ventrally and with the -
_ protnrent suture projecting, dorsal one impressed, red, often
Ste as Ue Bee * o ’ Ee

_ Goubly arched like the letter S.- Common on the mesas fron

-

<

il

43 miles below Theodore Utah to Chepeta Well and White
Kiver near the Colorado line at about 5U000° ait. aioe Tem-
perate life zone.

Philadelphus argyrocalyx. Wooton. T iis’ seems to ae the
same as P. Mexicanus Schlecht. P. serpyllifolius ray is only
a variety of it. I have material from Hillsboro peak New Mex.
and Coljonia Juarez Mexico. It is characterized by the pods
shorter than the hoary calyx. P. microphyllus se the calyx

white when young, and varies considerably, N n having
» made a species out of the Utah forms from my ectekt tion.
| Cogsw ellia rigida n. Sp. This is a Cymopterus Panamin-
- tensis in. everything but the fruit, and another very interesting
link be ag these closely rela ted genera. Itis very anomalous
as i 0 fase opulorum which connects the anisatus group
with Cone. Densely cxspitose from a thick, branched
and woody root covered with old coarse and ribbed leaf-
sheaths, acaulescent. Leaves suits but the ee pair of
divisions elongated so as to seem ternate, 4-67 | ; segments
broadly ovate, deeply and unequaily 35 lobed ee, then again
-2-3-toothed with coarse and tria angular and rigid acerose leetle
; kis 6-9" tee with cuneate hase, hadtie with 3 -5 ee

‘the wings about as wide as the narrowly elliptical body, nar-
ow at tip, thin, face with filiform and slightly raised ribs and
ormally 3 oil tubes in the intervals, chmmissure with 2 strong
Foil tubes on each side and 1-2 others usually reaching half way.
‘Near Big Pine, Inyo Co. California at 4000° ae May 30 1906,
aNo. (ees oe and Chandler. Tropical life zo
dleri n. sp. Root facode and with a
tender foot. Sieins slender, apparently single, erect, branch-
ing close to the ground and ‘with several short internodes anc
ith a peduncle mostly at each node except oa first. Leaves
bipinnate, triangular-ovate in outline, 3-4’ long exclusive of
the petiole; lowest pair of pinne short-stalked, the others
Sessile; pinnules divided nearly to the base into several pairs

12

of linear-oblong and obtuse but apiculate and short-pubescent _
- divisions. Root leaves with stout and nearly marginless peti-

oles, 4-6’ long. Stem leaves with conspicuous, very broad,
clasping, hyaline-margined and nerved petioles which on all
but the lowest leaves are wholly dilated and an inch long.

above and narrowed below. Oil tubes 2-3 in the intervals.
ths Sliform and raised into narrow wings toward the tip.
Siani‘estly a close ally to C. vaginata and the caruifolia group,

from careful field study from the flowering time to maturity of
the seeds.

Cymopterus Duchesnensis, n sp. M yton Utah among loose
rocks on southern slopes of mesas. Densely cxspitose, with
deep and rather fleshy, coarse and branched roots. Crowns
several, coarse and thick (about an inch thick), with imbricated
and very thick and woody old leaf-petioles an inch long which
become slightly fibrous when they rot. Nearly acaulescent.
Leaves many, on long and slender petioles, 3-5” long, erect

ba

bright-green, thick, pinnate, of one or two pairs of deltoid-cu-

13
neate leaflets, 1-14’ long which are varyingly 3-lobed or in-
cised and the lobes 2-3-toothed and with a sharp apiculation.
_ Leaves leathery and smooth; petioles not margined nor en-
larged below except at very base; lower pair of leailets distant.
Peduncles erect, 6-8’ long, rather slender. Involucres mostly
of one linear-subulate and green bract not over 6” long, but
mostly wanting. ays 10-15. about 2” long, the inner ones

_and rather slender. Involucels of several green bracts, with

fruit, stout, erect or spreading. Flowers dst small. Fritit
about 5” long and 3-4” wide including the wings, emarginate
at both ends. Seeds about a line wide and 4” long, very con

'cave on the inner face so that the two make an Ciibicelse
ded cross section, elliptical in Selene as to length; lateral

ee Oil tubes very narrow, 4-6.in the intervals and 2 on
‘each edge of the commissure and sometimes more, but very
faint. Sin of the commissure very much thickened and white.
This evidently belongs to the purpureus section but has the
seeds of the Pteryxia section and the leaves more like the
Utahensis section, At a distance the green tufts sare one of
Pzonia, a genus not found in the region. Thi e
culiar species. "Tt seas in very poor ‘soil pitty aikehnes
Lower oo life zon

totaenia multifida aad its variety Eatoni. For the

d Sica ae lowe field notes are furnished, in order to
S t they cannot be oe as separate species. Ra-
valli vets sae seeds 8 mm. long, oil tubes and corky
“ridge get ta se rays man Alta Montana material; seeds

oblong, v -15 mm. Jong, oil tubes absent and also
corky se pedicels many, leaves finely dissected. Lambert
alley Montana material; seeds 8 mm. long, with evident oil
bes and corky lateral nerve, foliage less dissected, rays many.
slackfoot Glacier Montana material ; fruit 8-10 mm. long, very

14

acutish and like the last, seed face very flat. Muncy Nevada
material ; fruit 10-14 mm. long, elliptical, without oil tubes and _
with lateral corky nerve, very flat, divisions of leaves 14-1”

ncave, no corky nerve, leaf
Segments very sharp, linear to triangular, 14-4” long, not over
1’ wide. Cuddy Mts. Idaho material referred to by Mr. Rose;

iruit broadly elliptical, 13-15 mm. long, oil tubes mostly pres-
ent, corky lateral nerve represented by 3 lines barely at all

»y nly, r w to many; Ruby Hill Nevada material
this has large fruit and short segments: Salina Canon Utah
My No many rays; Silver Reef Ut My No

78; segments obtuse and the same as in the Cuddy Mts.
. material, fruit 10 mm. long, concave, with oil tubes, rays many.
Tehachapi Califorina material; segments short and blunt,
fruit 16-18 mm. long. Nelson’s No. 4484 from Wyoming; fruit
flat,, 10-12 mm. long, without corky nerve, oil tubes present, :
rays many, leaf segments short and blunt, this would go for
Eatoni in spite of the fruit character. Bingham Utaé material:

15

]
_corky nerve present, rays many, leaf segments only acutish,
just like the Susanville material with large fruit. Carson City

and when mature would be more. Aurum Nevada materials,
cited by Rose as L. multifida, were in flower and with the same
blunt segments less than a line wide and 4-8” long, fruit gath-
ered later from the same plants ranges from 10-14 mm. long,
elliptical, concave, with raised lateral nerve, oil tubes present,
rays rather many. Rose cites my No. 3878 referred to above as
L. multifida. The Ruby Hill Nevada material cited by Rose

gathered alongside of the others have the fruit 18 mm. long,
but identical otherwise. Now all these citations show con-
clusively that neither Mr. Rose nor any other person can make
two distainct species out of this material as it is impossible to
get any character that amounts to anything specifically.
Townsendia mensana n sp. Densely c.espitose, perennial,
with heads sessile among the rosulate leaves,the mats 2-4’ wide.
Ashy throughout. Leaves linear-spatulate, 6-12” long, thick,

acute. Heads 4’ long and wide with rays 14” wide and about

with broad and hyaline margins lacerate. Pappus of ray se-
tose and about twice the width of the akene; pappus of the
ers. Akenes with conspicuously thickened and callous edges.
This belongs to the Fendleri section: Benches of the Uintas
rom 6000-7500° alt. at Theodore Utah. I also refer material
here from Silver City Utah April 4, 1896 and Mercur Utah
June 6 1896 and McIntyre’s ranch Utah May 18 1891.
oe Townsendia incana var. prolixa n. var. Winter annual
with slender tap root. Root leaves 1%-3’ long, on long peti-
oles, obovate-spatulate to broadly oblanceolate, sparsely pu-
bescent ; stem leaves oblanceolate, 1-154” long, triangular-acute,
_with short and broad petiole. Heads on short peduncles 4-3”
long, which have 1-3 leaves, the upper one being either invo-

16

lucrate or near the head. Central head of plant generally twice
as large as the others and on an erect and leafy peduncle.
Stems with many proliferous branches below and 2- y long ast
naked, ending in a cluster of 1-3 flowers, and either simple o

short- branched, the heads with disk about 6” high and 6-8”
wide. Rays 2” wide and 8-10” long, bright-pink. Scales with
broad, lacerate and ee e margins, acute. Pappus of ray
about as long as width of akene, that of the disk as long as the
flowers and plumose, the teeth being longer than the width
of the hair, sete often forked at base. Plants conspicuous by
being nearly green and proliferous with long rays, but there

are intergrades. Common throughout the Duchesne valley,

tah in exposed and gravelly places in.the Lower Temperate —

life zone, in May. My material gathered mostly on May 20
1908 :

Townsendia incana is correctly described by Torrey and

_the width of the akene, and that of the disk as long as the

flowers, with sete mostly simple and teeth shorter than the
width of the scale or hair. The type and variety differ con-
spicuouslv = baee have the same range and intergtade freely.

Partheni pinum var. ligulatum n. var. Ligule oval to
round, At6othed at tip, 1-2” long, rough-pubescent below,
rigid. Pappus adnate to the very thick corolla tube, green,
lacerate, triangular, about as lone as the tube. _ Akenes hoary,

jointed, 2-4” long, avd straight. Leaves spatulate-oblance-

olate. Plants very ¢ losely resemble’ Erio ogonum acaule and

grow in similar situations on nearly bare clayey and gravelly

knolls on ridges at 6000° alt. forming dense mats 6-12’ wide,

with thick and branched roots, habit also i Mears acaulis.
heodore Utah, Lower Temperate life zon

?

i ae ea er oe a ae

17

MR. ROSE AND THE UMBELLIFERAE.

na recent number from the National Museum Mr. Rose

goes over certain genera criticised by me in my last Contribu-

were not good species.
Mr. Rose, in commenting on my reductions, says there is
i h

genus to be well established must first rest on sure natural
grounds, and, second, must be properly characterized. I have

se.

Ph terus. This is credited to Torrey & Gray’s Flora
1 623, but there is no such genus published there. It is, how-
ever, given as a section of Cymopterus by Nuttall and ap-
proved by them. Its character there given is “Calyx teeth

earpophore none.” Coulter and Rose in erecting this into a
genus, p. 166, give it as of Nutt. when it should be (Nutt.) G
& R. They give the characters of the genus so far as paral-
leling Nuttall is. concerned “Calyx teeth evident.” Pericarp

ing in the whole genus of Cymopterus and its segregates ac-
cording to Coulter and Rose, and as the oil tubes are equally

variable in the whole genus there is not a character given bv

12

the genus as C. Utahensis Jones has wings as thin at-inser-
tion as in the other genera, In looking over Pteryxia and
oO

not rigid nor sharply toothed, and concave seed ace, and
nto i

wings of the carpels broad; commissure with 4-10 vittze ; carp-
_ophore free, 2-parted.” Coulter and Rose (p. 170) give the sim-

from strongly ribbed to broadly winged; oil tubes several ;
nothing said about. the carpophore. From this we find not a

19

Taking up Cymopterus proper, which I call section Eucy-
terus, Coulter and Rose characterize the genus on

Ww
genera out of this is SS etic for the " geftwr-ewveted and
dark-green-leaved, almost involucreless C. Fendleri and its var
Newberryi form a group very marked from the white- flowered
and glaucous-leaved looking and hyaline-involucred species of
the rest of the genus

Rhysopterus. This is characterized ‘on page 185 by Coul-
ter and Rose. They give the generic character as with obtuse
ribs while R. corrugatus has acute ribs, in addition they refer
Cymopterus globosus to Cymopterus while it is congeneric
with C. corrugatus which they oe to Rhysopterus. This
shows ees jeotahen” of this genu

Oreo They put this far Sit of its proper place in the
family Aart near to Thaspium, referring half of the i eae that
properly pelong to it to Pseudocymopterus, while it is mani-
festly allied to the Pteryxia and Scopulicola ships particu-
larly in vegetative characters. This group should embrace not
only the species referred to it but also C. anisatus, bipinna-
tus and Humboldtianus, C anisatus showing the intergrading
toward the waste: grou

P This as interpreted: by Coulter and
Rose is untenable ap it includes widely separated species, the

) only: eee to do with it is to consider it as a distinct aig

atits and bipinnatus to it as they have done destroys it. The
habit, leaf dissection, and fruit characters must keep them in

character that sticks, and that they cannot find their own ape
cies in the genera that they | have erected.

Cogswellia eucedanum). The segregates Ee this
genus which they call Lomatitm, Euryptera and Cynomiara-
thrum I have retained in this genus. Ponidté tium, as I hate
shown, is ‘untenable and has been abandoned by Rose.

Euryptera. This can be Lise ibe seh only on the combina-

; ae 20°

tion of rigid and not greatly dissected leaves and leptot enioid
fruit, no other character holds at all, but the same kind of fruit
is found in my section Campicola of Cogswellia and the same
kind of leaves is found in the section Crassipedunculata of
Cogswellia, so both characters fail as generic ones. The
genus is manifestly congeneric with Cogswellia though form-
ing a very good section.

ynomarathrum. This proposed genus has less legs to-

Lo
Pteryxia species and Cynomarathrum species, Cynom

: a
thrum therefore should be recharacterized as I have done in

Be) ee ee se ee Np Une Ge ees en ee

Ne Pe Rae ee CE ee ee re aed

21
Contributions No. 12, p. 32, and confined to C. Nuttallii and
Parryi and placed as a section of Cogswellia. The rest of the
species should be placed in Eucogswellia section and next in
generic relationship to Cymopterus as I have placed them on
page 33.

So far as the work on the Umbelliferx criticised by me is
concerned Mr. Rose has not been in the.west only as far as
Wyoming, and then only once, and recently in a part of Ari-

those who create so many species from purely selfish motives, it
might be inferred that I also included Coulter and Rose among

to go over their work critically, which I would not have
done had I believed otherwise. ey

Mr. Rose, in ‘speaking of my new gentts Cusickia, is un-
able to see any generic character in Cusickia minor, stating
that I have not given any. If he will take the trouble to read
over his generic character for Leptotcnia and my character for
Cusickia he will find them differing far more than any genera
he has created, or if he does not others can. fees

WESTERN AMERICAN BIRCHES, by B. T. Butler.

This paper in the Torrey Bulletin for August, 1909 is the
result of about five days’ field work at Bigfork, Montana, or
portions of five days. The writer has had charge of the botan-
ical work at the Biological station of the State University there
for the last two years, and Mr. Butler was there a short time
and did a little botanical work, being out with the writer on
three occasions, once at Rost lake, once at Yellow Bay, and at

various forms of B. glandulosa, all intergrading and growing
under the same ecological conditions. Out of this material
he makes two new species which have no standing whatever

valli as B. obovata, this also is a form of the above. Butler’s
Species amount simply to a description of individual plants to
which he gives new names and from which I also gathered ma-

Mr. Butler then takes up B. microphylla describing as spe-
cies some of the different forms, such as B. fontinalis ‘Sargent,

it often is thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. It al-
Ways grows in clumps.

Mr. Butler then takes up the paper birches and recog-
nizes every name ever applied to them but one as distinct spe- —
cies. Among the forms of B. alba are B. Alaskana Sargent and ©
B. papyrifera Marsh, which he recognizes as separate species
and distinct from alba though they are only forms. ee:

tula alba var. pendula (Roth Ten. FI. Germ, as species).

23

Lake on the roots.
Mr. Butler is a conscientious and modest young man with
great musical talent, who is taking his last year at Bronx Park
and Columbia for his Ph. D. degree, and this is a part of that
work. His ideas of specific limitation or rather lack of limita-
tion he has gotten wholly from that source and so has never
had any correct conception of what a species is, but regards it
as simply any old form that he may wish to describe as new.
‘he writer would be glad to subscribe several cents toward a
fund for the education of the professors who are responsible
for this kind of work so that they might go to some botanical
kindergarten where they could learn that a plant growing in
the shade or on a north slope or in a cold lake will differ from
another from the same’ parent which grows in a warmer and

he ee eet eg

24
NYCTAGINACAE, by Standley.

This recent publication by the Department of Botany in
the Smithsonian Institute is ostensibly a review of the Nyc-
taginacez, but actually it is an attempt to vindicate P. A. Ryd-
berg, of whom the author is a protege.

e writer of this review of Standley’s work published a
monograph of the Nvctaginacee in Contributions No. 10, This
work was based on nearly thirty years’ observations in the field
and on a very large amount of herbarium material,

caps the climax of absurdity by calling’ Abronia micrantha var.

_ pedunculata Jones a species while he has never seen but a sin--

nie bs ae
‘: ie 1 of her Pi § mn
Ue oe ey Pears ie

gle specimen of it and does not know that I have plenty of —
specimens of it with both sessile and peduncled heads on the —
same plant. I may wait in breathless suspense for him to n+?

sed
ae

able to distinguish the difference between the divine inspira~
tional halo and New York fog, and therefore, like the people of
Missouri, have to be shown.

' FOREST TREES OF THE UNITED STATES,
ot by N. L. Britton.

This sumptuous and exceptionally well printed yolume is re--
markable for its cost. If there is any reason for its appearance
other than a rivalry among publishers the text fails to show it. It.
is not to be compared with Sargent’s work in accuracy, nor even —
with the Manual by Sargent. Paar:

. GRAY’S MANUAL, SEVENTH EDITION.

The new edition of Gray’s Manual has recently appeared un-

der the joint authorship of Dr, Robinson and Mr. Fernald.
the same compact and handy volume as before, preserv-
ing the main features which have become so familiar to two gen-
erations of botanists, and yet is brought up to date in nomencla-
ture and arrangement of orders. The Grayan method of descrip-
tion is still retained, Alterations in sequence and form are many,
but the changes are more apparent than real. The natural order
of families according to their genetic relationship is adopted plac-
ing the lowest families first, but for the most part the order of
the genera and species in the families is reversed, placing the
highest first which is a poor arrangement, and follows Gray,
atson, Britton and the rest. The keys have for the most part
been entirely reconstructed and for this “all botanists owe them a
great debt of gratitude. Britton’s 3-volume Flora copied bodily the
old key of Gray’s Manual and without credit. The book is re-
markably free from clerical and typographical errors. A few
_ occur Here and there of minor importance, as in Juncus the deci-
mal point is misplaced in giving the measurement of the seeds
so that seeds seem to be longer than the pods in some spec'es. I no-
tice Corallorhiza maculata is credited to Rafinesque who so far as I
can find published only a Cladorhiza maculata. Betula crispa is
credited to Aiton when jt should be Dryand, etc., but such blund-
ers no book can wholly avoid, as the writer has found out too of-
ten in his own work. lisma Plantago L. is published as A.
Plantago aquatica, while Linnaeus did not publish the name. Sal-
icornia Europcea is published as such while Linnzus seems to

have given it as S. Europoea herbacea.

The most material changes or noticeable ones are in the adop-
tion of the first name of a species instead of the first naine in the
genus. This as we know is done against the authors’ better judg-
ment in order to conform to the Vienna code, and though perhaps
necessary is to be regretted. This alters many names of well
known plants, but is reduced to a minimum by the retention of the
excepted genera such Astragalus, etc. The adoption of such
names as Polypodium polypodioides is indefensible and absurd.

Testa r stesso. we,

27

Montia Chamissonis is given as M. Chamisoi i (Ledeb.) Durand
and Jackson instead of Greene. Chatiissonis 3 is the correct form
It looks like quibblin

The worst feature of the book is the uneven recognition of
species. The joint authorship of a book is never a success.
Robinson’s conception of species is excellent, also that of Eaton,
Ames and Hitchcock, but whoever wrote the Cyperacez ind some
other lower orders seems to have had no conception of Species at
all, about as bad as that of Greene and Rydberg. Stich a oe ribs:
as Scirpus rebrotinctus has no standing at all. The _ Ol
Carex is con using. In comparing Carex with its entinekt in
Britton’s Flora it erie: greatly. No one would imagine that C.
teretiuscula in Britton’s Flora and C. diandra in the Manual
(synonyms) were ae same species. The engravings in the es.
ual are much inferior, poorly etched and poorly printed. In t

matter of the engravings I take direct issue with A es Cate

in Rhodora 10 207 where she speaks of the engravings with un-
stinted praise.

One of the most commendable things in the book : bass ig-
noring of the split genera of Britton, Rydberg and Sm For
some years the Brittonians have raised a great Phe and ne about
the new and original work done by them in splitting up the Gray-

an genera. A recent repetition of this is in the Torrey Bulletin
_ where the new Manual was reviewed through Bronx Park glasses.

Anything published by Harvard is like a red flag before a bull to
Bronx Park. Whenever Harvard sneezes Bronx Park has a fit,

and it is a standing joke among botanists. T his critique says of
_ the work of Ames among the orchids that it fails to recognize the
recent studies of Rydberg in Habenaria, ctc., as though ‘Rydberg

had done any original work in this genus. When we come to

" tions to generic rank and given new names to them and renamed
all the species. The limitations to the sections were done for the
- most part before Rydberg was born. Rydberg tries to justify this

j ognized by European botanists. Now if there is any crazy thing

; ‘that some pee botanist has not. done in the near or remote

"favor. Rydberg hea to do the same is in seals
but he went a little farther and tried to split up some of Gray’s

28

sections and made a sage mess of it as I have shown in my
Contributions. An amusing part of this critique is that this Man-
ual ought to be called Britton’s Manual as it is nearer Britton’s
Flora than Gray’s Manual. Perhaps there is something to this
suggestion as Britton’s Flora practically copied the oid Gray’s
Manual altering the phraseology and then adding a great deal of
other matter that was not specific, but we have not as yet seen any
acknowledgment from Britton of his indebtedness to Gray’s Man-
ual and are not likely to see it.
he writer had hoped that the book’ would discard some of
the great defects of the botanies of his boyhood days. In this he
has not been n wholly disappointed, as there have ee many im-

sample of how to do it. This was again exetiniined in the re-
vision of the Onions, and last year in the revision of the Wil-

adopted, namely taking the same organs in the same order in re-
lated species. For example in Betula on which the writer is ve
now working the Manual takes up the leaves in the same order
B. pendula and B. alba, the twigs are taken up first, then ie
leaves, catkins and scales in order which is good and a very great
improvement on the hit or miss way of Gray’ s former manual.
_ But there the good work stops just as it does in Britton’s Flora.
Britton’s flora practically copies Gray’s old manual and then
throws in about as much more stuff with no attempt at antithet-
ical comparison in any of it, much of which would appiy to any
one ot Bet fie related species.

w to be specific let us take B. pendula and B. aiba in the
Akos, It is impossible to make a suitable comparison with the

same species in Britton’s Flora as he evidently knows very little —
about the birches, but we will take up two related species there :

later.

the key we find that_B. pendula has “strictly ¢labrous -

each and leaves” and B. alba has puberu lent or pubescent

branches and variably hairy leaves. This is the proper panera ‘

arrangement if it is true. , But we find at the outset that the

of pendula are very war ty. Now the Manual in the sae Sia es :

rsceee
cin Seats

yal

that glabrous means “smooth.” If very warty is smooth then the
_ writer must not know what smooth is. It is Sai that the re-
viser of the Betulacez took glabrous to mean not hairy, which is
_ not true. But brushing this aside it still remains that B. pendula

has not hairy twigs and leaves while B. alba has hairy twigs and
leaves, or at least the beginning of hairs (puberulent) which is
good if true, but even this fails in the var. minor which for all we
know is a form of B. pendula. which shows that the character of
pubescence is a feeble diagnosis. Now taking the branches we
find that B. pendula has “slender, flexuous and drooping branches”
while B. alba has ascending branches, nothing said about the
slenderness or flexuostity and so they might be either so far as
the text goes, while the writer knows that the branches of B. alba

dent who tries to get anything out of it. The branchlets of B.
pendula are “usually verrucose with resiniferous atoms” whic
is a long way of saying réesinous-warty. In B. alba we find that

hairs when present which is self evident if the branchlets are
hairy as already stated. So briefly stated the branchlets of B.
pendula are very resinous-warty, and of B. alba less so which

ovate to deltoid or broad-ovate, subcunate, truncate o b-
cordate at base, long-acumine, slender-petioled.” Now if the
eaves are cuneate at base and long-acuminate a they can-
not help being rhombic-ovate if the broadly-ovate. If
they are cuneate to cordate at base they run the gamut of

B. alba has ovate leaves, taper-pointed, rounded to cuneate at
base, 3-6 cm. long, smooth. and green above, pale, glandular-
dotted, and a little hairy on the veins beneath, sharply and un-
equally doubly-serrate. Now comparing with B. pendula we find
the leaves are glutinous when young; nothing said about it in
alba, but in two varieties they are glutinous. In pendula the
leaves are firm, nes said about alba. In pen atts the leaves

therefore must be rhombic at times. In other words the leaves of

SB: alba are ovate and those of B. pendula are broader, which is a

30

much shorter and a fully as seeing way of stating it. The base
is rounded to cuneate, but we find the var. cordata has cordate

leaves. So the less said ie the bases of the leaves the better. _

In 4. pendula the leaves are long-acuminate, and in alba taper-
pointed, if taperpointed is not long or short acuminate there is
nothing in the text to show it. In B. pendula the leaves are slend-

Ean. meni Ae fertile catkins are 1.5-3 em. long anc 6-9mm.
wide; in B. alba they are I.5-4.5cm. iong and 6-16min. wide,
which is eo oa way of saying that in B. alba they are a little
longer and wider. In B. pendula they are pendulous, 1 B. alba
they are speeds ot drooping, a distinction that amounts to very
little . pendula they are on unknown peduncles, in B. alba
on ade: peduncles, which is also useless for comparison. In
B. pendula the scale character is given in Italics which the authors
. tell us is of special significance, but in B. alba the scale character _
- is not given in Italics and so again we have a see-saw description —
of the “special character. In B. pendula the scales are ascending, —
brown to straw colored, 3-5 mm. long, smooth except for the |
ciliate edge. In B. alba they are also ascending (a character that _
therefore does not belong in either description but belongs in the :
key above), mostly ciliate-edged, a character that aiso belongs in
the key above, nothing said about the smoothness. 3-7 nim. jong 2
in ee words a trifle longer normally.
A revised description of the two species that contains all the

=e
oa

|

3

7

Pier ate Moe atta Sed) FA. i cai ain leer CMA Chi 8 Og ide | he TS ee! Dae OL hy edad eas

essential ve as given in the text would be about as foliows:

Betula pendula. Twigs very resinous-warty. without hairs,
Ssvne: Leaves broadly ovate to deltoid, not hairy. Fertile
catkins ].5-4.5 cm. long, 6-9-mm. wide.

Betula nite. Twigs not very resinous-warty, hairy Chairs
sometimes minute), more ascending. Leaves ovate. hau y below.
Fertile aoe a little longer and wider

n’s Flora we will take the first two species of birc
populifolia is a slender tree reaching 45° high and with
1:5? thick Sun. while B. papyrifera is 80° high and wit’ 3° thick

served for the next eenkence: We are informed that the bar

31

of B. papyrifera except on the young twigs peels off in thin lay-
ers. Then we chase up the bark in the other species and find that
it peels up tardily in thin sheets. What difference there is between
layers and sheets Britton does not state ncr does any one else .
know. If there is no differenc then there is no use in giving it.
We find that the bark of B. populifolia is very white and smooth
hut we are not informed whether it is white or black, smooth or

in B. populifolia are deltoid, in B. papyrifera ovate, which is the
_ proper way to put it. In B. populifolia they are pubescent on the
veins when young, nearly glabrous when old, minutely glandular,

leaves are long-acuminate, sharply dentate, and commonly some-
what lobed (which statement his figure of the leaves beties), ob-

at base. Now by a process of digestion and assimilation we

that B. populifolia has long-acuminate leaves and B. papyrifera
- acuminate leaves, nothing said about how long or how short-
acuminate, B. populifolia has sharply dentate leaves and B. papy-
_ rifera dentate leaves, nothing said about how sharp or how bluntly
dentate. By referring to’the figures which are always excellent
and by far the best thing in Britton’s Flora we find that B. popu-
_ lifolia has coarsely, and obtusely dentate leaves, wnile B. papyri-
fera has very obscurely and acutely dentate leaves. B. papyrifera

"variable base than the other. We find that both species have
_ slender petioles, a character that belo

32

not im the description of either. In B. populifolia we find that
the leaves are [.5-2.5% long, orvin other: words: B. papyrifera has
leaves normally about twice as long as B. populifolia but wi

wider range in length, but when we come to examine the figures
of the leaves we find that B. populifolia has leaves about a half.
longer than B. papyrifera,. now which is right the figure or the
description? We find the petioles channeled ini B. populifolia and
nothing: said about it in the other. The male catkins of B: populi-
folia are 2-3’ long, and in B.. papyriferay 2-4’ long,.a distinction
with scarcely a difference. The pistillate catkins of B. populi-
folia and B. papyrifera are cylindrical-and this character’therefore
belongs in the key and not here, they are: both:slender-peduncled
also,, which belongs in the key: In B. papyrifera the fertile cat-
kins are described as spreading or drooping and figured as ap-
pressed and erect, nothing said about it in the other, but figured
as ascending and spreading. In B. populifolia they are described’
as 9-18” long, 3-5” wide, and in B. papyrifera.as 1-2’ long and
M4-yat wide. We see a use of different denominations in meas-
urement which is always bad, it should have been.in the one 9-12”
long, and the other 12-24” long, 3-5” wide, and 3-6” wide, this
kind of juggling with figures implies.a difference when there is
none worth mention, When we come to examine the figures we~
find B. papyrifera has catkins about twice as wide as the other

lobes divergent, larger than the middle one. Those ‘of B. papyri-

acter'as shown by the figures is not mentioned: in the text. at all,

serted beyond the-others:. We find that:the body of the nut is nar--
rower than-its* wings inxboth species, a character that does. not
belong in the-description’of either.

we area SS ee
}

03

Now out of all this botanical chaff what wheat can we find?
It appears as if Gray’s aie and Britton’s Flora are trying to

_ describe the same two spec

n’s characters fk hie two species ces pe down and

_ taking account of the figures would be about as fo

Common characters. Bark white and ae "off in thin
Leaves denticulate and — slender-petioled, large,

q canes dark-green and not hairy above. Fertile catkins cylin-

dric, slender- “pedunten: 9-24” ie Fruiting bracts ciliate. Nut
narrower-than its w
- Distinctive charact

old. Fruiting bracts with obtuse lobes, the centrai one little ex-
serted beyond the others.
pyrifera. Leaves ovate, with more rounded base, acute

E to short acuminate but not tailed, obscurely and sharply dentate,
_ pubescent. F ruiting bracts acute, the central one exserted wholly.

Comparing these two sets of enesnlaa descriptions in the Man
ual and in Britton’s Flora we find they agree well in a general
way, and are brief and to the point if impet rfec

In spite of the great amount of chaff in Britton’s Flora a

_ the perpetually ones descriptions it was the best thing ever
_ printed on the e n flora, because of the excellent figures, the »

exact citation my setae A and the possibility of being able to.
sift out of the verbosity of descriptions the characters of t

Manual, being almost aes

34

MR. HELLER AND NOMENCLACTURE.

The publication of the eacls on nomenclature in my last
Contributions seems to have given Mr. Heller (in Muhlenbergia)
‘a bad attack of mental colic, recurrent colic. His capacity to ap-
preciate the motive and scope of my criticisms reminds one of the
Englishman who after traveling extensively in this country re-
turned home and said to his admiring friends “The Americans are
a very clever people but they have many uncouth expressions,
in they say Where am I at, we would say Where his my ’a

Mr. Heller says he believes that the first name applied Me a
thing should stand. Just so. For the last fifteen years we have
heard nothing else, ad nauseam, except once a synonym always a
synonym, as though this were a panacea for all botanical ills. If
so then why does he not apply it? Why do not the other Brit-
tonians ? if priority is much more valuable than to accept the
common usage of the botanical world and is in fact the sine qua
non in botany why do they take the utterly inconsistent position
that priority must not sa earner than 1753 nor in any other lan-
guage than Latin? What magic is there in the year 1753 any
more than in 753, 53 or 3? No one is so stupid as to believe that
botany began in 1753. Many plants were more accurately de-

y as many people as the Baaleh nor ever came as near to a
World language as our tongue comes now. The reason most bot-
anists take this year and this language as the starting points is
not because they regard priority as valuable in the Dark Ages of
botany, but because by starting there they are enabled to keep bot-
anical names stable, and a stable nomenclature is the one great
desideratum, and this can come only by common consent and not
by any erbitrary rules whose application would upset tne whole

35

fabric of accepted names as the Brittonian system has done and
3

is doing in the hands of its adherent

Yow suppose Mr. Heller were to be consistent and really do ~
what he says is the only thing to do, use prior names, he would
naturally work the English language first. His botanical god-
father Britton would allow him to follow his own example doubt-
less in putting a Latin tail on his English words, a la Manihota
Britton for Manihot L. Suppose he takes up the gooseberries and
currants to which he has given some study, his new names would
_ pan out about as follows: gooseberrya lacustris Heiler, Curranta

_ Teda Heller (it should be remembered that the great law of prior-
ity demands that we should publish the name exactly as it was
first given, although Britton would allow us to Latinize the tail,
apparently the most important part of it, we therefore must not
_ say rubra but red-a). Now after he has Hellerized all the Eng-
lish names of these fruits and gotten the Hellerian tail properly
adjusted to all, he will find that the Greek antedates the English,
then he can get up another new set of names from the Sanscrit,
then the Chinese, then he might take up the Egyptian and give
still another batch of new names. By the time the botanical public
has begun to recover from the last of these inflictions it is likely
that the phonograph and the graphophone will be so perfected that
they can take the ripple marks made by sound waves on prehis-
toric mud (now turned to stone) produced by the incoherent bab-
blings of some of the simian ancestors of the Brittonians, and re-
produce them so that they will be as lucid as some recent descrip- _
tions of plants, and will have far stronger claim to priority of pub- —
_ lication than the Brittonian check list had-at the time when it was -
said to have been published. ¥ sce

Yes, priority is a great thing-—for making changes-in estab-
lished names. as

Mr. Heller says he believes in splitting. This is really a re-
dundant remark. For anyone who can publish the same species
in three different genera at once as he did in his Catalogue of
North American plants must be a splitter of splitters, outdoing
even Curie the chemist, for the latter only segregated the Radium
atom a split from Uranium, but Heller must have gotten far be-

yond that and found the botanical electrons. :

” -He goes onto say that any name whatever applied to a plant
‘Ought to be a specific name. It makes one shudder at hen he —
would inflict on systematic botany if he were to go thr eg ud-
worth’s catalogue of trees and make specific names ct all th

s

36

seedsman’s varieties and forms there given. But that is not even

~a beginning to what he would do with the snnendd names of her-

baceous plants as we find them in seed catalo We fear his
stock of good Latin would run dry long before he got through.
Suppose we take some of the Hellerian — under those
conditions. We would have such combinations as this: Malus
Redastracanus, Malus pees. Malus aie ther-us, a very
appropriate name which he would do well to follow. Mr. Heller |
would soon distance Cecene: who now holds the record with his.
several hundred species of Eschscholtzia out of a possible valid
dozen. And yet Mr. Heller says he only describes species. In
view of his statements as to what constitutes a species (anything
deserving a name of any kind is a Hellerian species) the botani-
eal public will certainly demand to be cas whether hie knows.
what a species is

Ir. Heller says that we ought to name everything in iee :
because it often happens that what a person once considered trivial
characters prove by further study to be specific, or some other
botanist comes along and proves that the describer of a species ©
lumped several in one. Just so. How about the hundreds of Nut-
talian species that further study has shown were fictitious? The

knows that these men either know nothing about ecology or de-_
liberately ignored fundamental and primary facts in ecology in
order to make specific names to which they could attach their own
names as authors. It is almost inconceivable that a botanist even
with the knowledge that an ordinary boy would pick up in the -
fields if left to himself does not know that a plant grow mie in ee
shade will differ from another of the same species if gro
the sun and will differ in certain well known directions, will “tiffer
if grown on a hot or cold slope, a rocky or loamy soil, a well
drained or poorly drained soil, and yet if the seeds of these plants
are planted the peculiarities will at once disappear if put under
other ecological conditions. We must give those men the credit
of having ordinary sense, and if we do then the conclusion is in--
evitable that they made these species for purely personal reasons.

Mr. Heller claims that it is personal abuse to say that the

chance of getting one’s name attached to the tail of a new botanical

. af

combination is at the bototm of so many new names in American
botany. Ji his statement is true then there must have been some
other weighty reason for the coinage of these names due to deep

s
American plants? What deep and exhaustive reason led Mr.
Heller to coin the name Astragalus Malheurensis for Rydberg’s
Astragalus Cusickii when he did not know enough about it to
know it was already a synonym for a variety of Astragalus ar-
rectus? What deep and exhaustive research leads Mr. Heller in
nearly every issue of Muhlenbergia to make a new batch of names
for recently described species which he finds are homonyms b

‘referring to the Kew Index when he does not know whether the
proposed species are valid or not, or whether the names given in

.

the Index are nomina nuda or not? Any eighth grade school boy —

could do as well as that. Does Mr. Heller think that is good bot-
any? If so he stands almost alone. No one denies that he or
any other person has a legal right to publish what he likes, but
no one has a moral or botanical right to make names for things

that he knows nothing about. It is in violation of the fundamental

laws of botanical good taste, and is everywhere condemned.

This craze for making new names for plants reminds one of
a lot ef school boys at a pie counter in a mad scramble for fear
they will not get any pie. A sample of this foolish work is in
Muhlenbergia 4 56 where Cockerell rushes into print because the

there at all and Rafinesque published nothing of any kind on that

to get a Cockerell tail on a new botanical name the Kew Index
blunder would never have been noticed.

Mr. Heller says that I am objecting to so many new names —

and yet I do not hesitate to make many myself, and therefore it
is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The logic ot this con-
clusion reminds me of the conundrum “When potatoes are wort

fifty cents a bushel how many beans will it take to shingle a meet-

;

t

‘d

38

-
ing use a Mr. Heller is not able to see the difference between

tuch wo s | have criticised above and the results published
in my it Couteibalions he certainly will need the sympathy of
the botanical public. The poet published there and oe sup-
pression of species or reduct of them was the result of a —
lifetime spent in active wo paring in eke field and oe. soe :
of the work having been held in abeyance for years after the man-
uscript was written in order to be sure that as few mistakes as
possible were made. I am not objecting to new names, the more
the better, if they are based on sound views of specific limitation
and exhaustive field research, but I do object and and most other —
. botanists object to the slip-shod and inexcusable work mentioned ~

Mr. Heller is right in saying that there is but one way to
determine the validity of a species and that is by thorough field ©
ork. I have several times emphasized the same thing in my —
Consteibutions. saying of those who claim to be able to settle such
things by appealing to their “botanical sntufiens® that “no one
men ¢

re on known facts. Such arguments always get their users

into difficulty. I well remember when it was a stock argument —
among geologists to claim that the climate of the Arctic was —
Tropical in the early Quaternary because elephants (mastodons)

lived there, animals which live only in Tropical climates. Many —
years afterwards one of these animals was aes ina perfect state: —
of preservation imbedded in the ice, and it pro 3

founded have been proved fictitious. For example the develop-
ment of stipules in willows has proven fallacious; the drying —
black of the leaves is due to laziness of collectors. The develop- —
ment of the torus and dissection of the leaves in Eschscholtzia are _
of little taxonomic value. The development of pappus in Town- —
sendia an znactis is largely accidental and not specific al- —

ways. The development of awns in Oxytheca has coat value. _

aS a
The development of leaves in parts of Eriogonum amounts to lit- a
tle. The development of wings and ribs in the Umbellifere has
been greatly overestimated taxonomically. The whole tendency
of field study has been to reduce and not multiply species. It is
true that certain persons after limited field study have proposed
_ the splitting up of many species but it is only in exceptional cases
that this has ben sustained by exhaustive field work. Of late the
tendency to ignore ecological conditions in the making of specific
names has been particularly vicious.

Mr. Heller is right when he says that no one makes or un- a
makes a species. They either exist in nature or they do not ex- =
ist at all. The careful field botanist knows that in ninety-five per- z
cent of the cases species have well defined limitations easily rec-
ognizable as they grow. The few not easily distinguished are

ber of new species that do not fit these “segregates” oF -

than the old species and so they pile up more new names. 00¢ :
s oa f [schoscholtzia.

made many untenable species in fina ee
Eriogonum, Phlox, Scirpus, Carex, Sitanion, and the Pee an |
etc. In nearly every case these specific names have been made by s

40

. .

lence in the cases cited. During the past season I have made —

people with scanty material without any or with litcle field exper- ;

y

is but one great thing that the botanist should keep in mind and
_that is “What are the facts?” If he starts out with the thought —
_ that species is only a name to conceal what never existed and pure-
ly a matter of the personal equation then his work has no value. 3
If he starts out with the humble attitude of the student, ready to —
see what is before his eyes and ready to forego his theories when . —
the facts compel it, then he may do valuable work and not till —
then. If he starts out with the idea as many have done that the ©

more his name gets in print the greater will be his reputation es- ~
pecially if his name forms the tail to new botanical combinations
he will land in Scylla and Carybdis where many are now. Some —
_ seem to forget that one’s name attached t

tion is a perpetual advertisement. of incompetence. With the —

remark by Engelmann many years ago is in point J had been

Pugatory for making too many species of Cactacez,” for he could —
not distinguish the two species. 1f he were to suffer so in the next
world for his errors we would have to resurrect Dante to make a2
suitable Purgatory for some present day botanists I fear. oe

The fundamental law in botany which we find everywhere —
emphasized is that plan life must be in

an

Ay.

4] these so-called species revert to type when restored to a state of
nature, the statements of certain recent botanists to the contrary
_ notwithstanding.

_ their own thinking. Mr. Heller might explain what personal
_ jealousy led Dr, Robinson to roast him in the Botanical Gazette ?
in the most caustic terms for publishing the same species in sev- -

cessively dissatisfaction, contempt and rage. These things will
not be endured much longer, a little more and the sinning tax-
onomists will be cast out into the outer darkness where there shall _-
be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Tf Mr. Heller has ever done

_ anything in a taxonomic way that might cause jealousy in others
- the writer has missed seeing it. :

& ‘There are some people who have surrounded themselves with
- a halo of self adulation so dense that they can never see the differ-

ati
ae

ored by his.inane harangues each nday, he called them irre-

h dust the fake taxonom-
he real issue 8 :
d

42

known facts of ecology and appeal to their inner consciousness,
or ‘botanical intuitions” as Britton calls it, for justification of

For about fifteen years the botanical world has kept silence in :
the matter of fake species-makin

Sa

that a few snubbing posts judiciously placed on the prairie would
hasten events, hence the cries from the calves.

%

Sy ee Tt ee ese eee ee Pee eS =

-

en ee ane Eees le ee nee ee ee ee es ee ee Pad

_ moved since I was there! Etc

FLORA OF WASHINGTON.

missed a permanent character.
e compilation of data under the species is very valuable.
The best part ot the work is the Grasses.
The author has shown considerable independence in the re-

left out though placed in the key. On page 147 under Agropyron
biflorum we find Agropyron repeated in the line below when it
should be Triticum. On page 157 the second Voluine of the Bot-
any of California is made to appear in 1876 when it came out in
1880. On page 160 Eleocharis obtusa should be ( Willd.) Schultes.
On page 165 Carex festucacea var. brevior shouid be (Dew.)
Fernald Proc. Am. Acad. 37 and not as given.

Carex Douglasii var. laxiflora should be Mem. Torr. Club I 21
instead of 2 20. On page 171 Carex nigricans should have been
Mem, Pet. I 210 instead of 211. On page 183 Juncus alpinus var.
insignis was published in 1868 instead of 1866. n page 184
Juncus Mertensianus was pu
page 187 Allium cernuum should be rch.
I 2.. On page 165 Calochortus Lyallii’s range is given as Eastern
Washington in the Cascades, if that is true the Cascade range has

His treatment of the willows does not throw much light on

44

phylla is uncertain though it would point to alba. He keeps up
Alnus sinuata when it is only a form of cris pa, and also keeps
tenuifolia separate from incana with which it freely intergrades,

z
i zi
7 ee
.

asd ite his Es
: 7
oe
are

sini

f

ee

+ ie aes

’ ; ae

ae
_

7

ne

1

ty
Bika cal
. uae
ae

Se ee

tf
st

FLORA OF COLORADO.

_ tensive and best collections ever made in the state, and. for its

imperfect knowledge of the distribution of species in. the: state.
t. Rydberg’s critical work seems to be confined to collec-
tions accessible to him at Columbia and is and always has been
devoid of. that large generalization and critical. knowledge that
he could have obtained at Harvard and Washington, and of. the
many valuable western collections. His specific limitations of new
or rare species seem tc ave been drawn from single specimens
and are always defective. .
t is very unfortunate that Mr. Rydberg has become so sat-

the species making craze his work would good. There is a
steady deterioration in his work since he got out Physalis and
Potentilla.

any judgment worth having. We know that botanical bossism is

the work the-bosses had at their disposal.

46

THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION
of the
FLORA OF THE GREAT PLATEAU.
An Address before the Utah Academy of Sciences.*

In determining the origin of a flora, a person immediately
assumes that its geological antecedents will govern its character,
which is literally true, but is not true in the broad sense generally
assume

It is a well known fact that there has been a constant expand-
ing and progression in the flora of the world from simplicity to
complexity, and from scarcity to abundance and the reverse: but
the old dea of infinitessimal gradation due to Spencerian evolution
isa myth. It is true that the term evolution still persists, like the
vermiform appendix in man, but it is a misnomer and 1s improp-
erly used for the involution of today. The word “Spencerian” is
used advisedly as he defines evolution clearly.

ere is no one fact in geology better established than the sud-
den appearance of great numbers of new genera and species with-
out infinitessimal gradation, all along through the ages wherever
there has been a marked change of climate. The assumption that
this is due to incompleteness of the record or to migration is a
kind of guesswork that can hardly be called scientific. ;

Climatic changes are due to celestial or terrestrial agencies,
particularly the latter, and the latter are either general or local.

and twenty thousand years ago as the precession theory demands,

*The body of this paper was written in 1895. but has been withheld
pending a complete examination of the species of the Great Plateau.

a

47

thousand years ago, long after the precession theory would have
required the disappearance of the ice age. So whatever effect
precession has had, it has been obscured so as not to be traceable
in the vegetation of today. It must be conceded, however, that

there was land. ;
The terrestrial changes in the flora, as I have said, are of

the vegetation which has been turned into coal, and in hydrocar-
bons and lime beds which are buried in the earth: also erosion has
been gradual. These three causes have almost completely altered
the vegetation of the land.

The paroxysmal changes are those due to alteration of the
surface of the land, due to earth folds, and are the most important
of all in relation to the vegetation of today, while the other chang-
es noted are the most important in geological history.

It is a practical certainty that vegetable life began in the a
at the poles, for that is where the first temperature cool enoug

for vegetable life would be found. This life gradually extended
temperature

we
5
a
3
7
i}
th
=
oO
o
is’)
o
oO
“
ie]
Qu
9
uo)
or
o
Cu
Comal
io)
iS)
o
=
oO
4
oo
o
=
8,
a)
|
©
hte gs
fart
=
oO
ct

ne .\
orms would appear first near
the poles.
The Carboniferous Age, which, compared with today, was
very early in the earth’s history, was remarkable for the salsa
development of land vegetation in quantity which has never been

48

of the Mesozoic was tropical in Utah, at least, till the beginning of

in all directions, which must have made the climate very humid
still and precluded the existence of arid vegetation. Eastern Utah

of fresh water. But during most of the Tertiary, at least near the
sea level, the climate still was tropical throughout our region.
However, in the latter portion of the age, we have unmistakable
evidence of a temperate climate, though warmer than that of to-

around the borders of the lakes, as is proved by their fossil re-
mains in the clay beds, and.even some of the willows and cotton-

49

woods of today fringed their shores. The climate of that age
must have been radically different from ours of today, as a whole,
because of the presence of the inland seas, which must have caused
the humidity to be at saturation point most of the time, and there-
fore, must have prevented the existence of arid plants. In addi-
tion to that, it was a period of great volcanic disturbance and im-
mense lava flows covering thousands of square miles, which must
have increased the temperature of the region and also the amount
of carbonic acid in the air. It was also an age of mountain mak-
ing, where the structure of today as we see it, was formed in large
part, and where every possible opportunity for the development of
vegetable life occurred, from the frigid to the tropical. The seas
formed ample means for the distribution of seeds from one moun-
tain range to another, and thus facilitating a uniformity of the
vegetation along their shores, while the freshness of the water
prevented the destruction of the seeds. During this time there is no

alkali plains and lakes. Utah and Nevada at that time were set
of parallel ranges of mountains with broad valleys draining down
to the Colorado and the Columbia. Soon after that, volcanic dis-
turbances formed the Great Basin and cut off the drainage to the
north and south. ;

t — time the profound disturbances of the earth’s phate
toward the north cut off the warm ocean currents from the North

50

Pole, which had hitherto prevented the excessive cooling around
the poles, and thereby made possible the beginning of the Ice
Age in America. There were still vast bodies of ocean water at
the north, but the lack of opportunity for the rapid intermingling
of those waters with the ocean currents of the south, resulted in a

glaciers throughout Montana and Idaho, and smaller ones
throughout the mountains of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado.

lakes called Lahontan and Bonneville, of which Pyramid and
Walker Lake and Carson Sirk now represent the one, and Great
Salt Lake the other.

\s the access of the ocean currents to the North Pole was still
farther cut off and the Arctic lands emerged from the sea, and the

the temperate plants crept up along the valleys of Arizona, climb-
ing the mountains and the rim of the Great Basin, and slowly
displaced the dying vegetation of the Frigid invaders, tii! it spread
out over all the valleys and possessed the land from the Colorado
to the Yukon, and as the climate still grew milder, the temperate

a

5

———

plants climbed the mountains and possessed their lower slopes as

vegetation wherever a mountain peak has a B rigid climate from
Nevada to Colorado or from Arizona to British Ataerica though

or so and many of them are different species though belonging to
the same genera. The only remnant of the Frigid flora we now
have in the valleys of the Great Plateau 1s found in ‘he flowers of
early spring which bloom quickly, bear fruit and die away. f
such plants are Orogenia, Claytonia, and the sand lily, some onions,
the sego, most of the phloxes, the yampa, the Fritillaria, many of
the buttercups, and some others. ;

As the Temperate plants displaced the Arctic plants in the

the Temperate ones in all the region south of the Great Basin. A
few of the Tropical plants, particularly annuals, have even invaded
the Great Basin as far north as Salt Lake City, though they are

~ same stock and which dct the deserts of the South like the dead

D2

boss Ale trunks:in a burned over forest, there is none so inter-

esting or inion as the Joshua and the Yuccas, of which there are
many s. They stand out in the desert like scarcecrows with
their soon bayonet leaves, sometimes three feet long, sticking out
in swabs at the ends of the stems, or like needles 1n a pincushion
from. the napa as though protesting mutely at be:ng compelled
to exist in such a region as that. These descendants of the old
Tropical flora are few in proportion to the main vegetation, but
are quite different from. the typical desert flora.

It is a botanical axiom that the vegetation of a region is in

matic conditions in w hich they are found. This leads us to the
subject of life zones.

LIFE ZONES.

It has been noticed by all acute travellers, doubtless since the
beginning of man, that different climates hav e differe nt vegetation.
This i is particularly noticeable to all mountain climbers within the

thi

‘statement of wide circulation and general acceptance was probably
that of Humboldt about the beginning of the last century. From
the tops of the lofty mountains of Mexico there dawned upon him

_ with tremendous force the fact of life zones, as looking from those
peaks he could see at his feet the Alpine flo ra, and farther down
at middle elevations, the vast forests and waving plains of the
Temperate flora, and far down near the sea, the palms, bananas
and oranges of the Tropical flora; This led him to classify vege-
tation into Tierra fria, Tierra temperada, and Tierra caliente.
This same idea was further expanded when applied to the globe
as a whole, and has received universal acceptance, into the Tropi-
cal, Temperate, and Frigid life sae the fundamental idea under-

lying it-all being that of tempera From a botanical point of
view this classification has one Jecaces of error, as is shown by
an: goatedige study of the vegetation, and that is, the Frigid does

not deserve to he classed as a life zone, because its plant life dif-
fees but: little es that of the Temperate, though the physical and
visible effects are very noticeable. There are then but two great
life zones, the Tropical and the Temperate. An exhaustive ex-

53

_ amination of the vegetation determines this fact with absolute cer-
_ tainty which will be shown later by diagrams. common error
_ into which many have fallen, has led to a serious misconception of
_ life zones by the failure to recognize the effect of humidity on the ~
_ climate. Hitherto the Tropical life zone has generally been sup-
- posed to be confined to that portion of the earth’s surface bound-
ed by the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer and confined to the
humid portion, but a moment’s thought will show that the arid
portion belongs equally with the humid, though its flora is al-
most totally different from that of the humid. This fast is also
cstablished by the knowledge that you can grow the date paim.
oranges and lemons, pomegranates and figs in the arid rezions by
simply supplying the necessary moisture artificially. This there-
fore establishes the fact that the climate of Arizona and southern
California is truly tropical and that we must not bound the Tropt-
cal life zone by the Tropic of Cancer, for that flora extends much
farther north. :

In 1883 in the Western Galaxy, the writer published an ac-
count of the origin of the flora of the Great Basin, giving in other
words a general summary of the facts here noted, but claiming no
originality for these ideas because as a schoolboy, about 1860, he
had studied in Cornell’s Geography, these same facts, though he
had never had an opportunity to verify them himself till in 1878
when he had stood on the loftv mountains of Colorado and had
been profoundly impressed with the same thoughts experienced by
Humboldt a century before.

In 1884 a young man in the employ of the Government, Dr.
C. Hart Merriam, who was studying the animal life of the San
Francisco mountains in Arizona, stood on the lofty San Francisco
peak and according to his own statement to me, saw for t é rst
time this magnificent parorama before him and had impressed up-
on his mind also, most forcibly, the subject of life zones, and so he
proceeded later on to elaborate the life zones and give them pret
of his own, ignoring the work of Humboldt and all his predeces-
sors. He classifies the life of our western region as ne
which he divides into Upper and Lower, Transition, and Reine
His classification is most remarkable in the manner in sor it
ignores hotanical facts. It was confessedly based on the it
bution of animal life, but without knowing much 0 gids “Peas
about the vegetable life, he states that the botanical and zoolog-
ical life zones are identical. Whether his z00

4

correct, I am unable to state from my own knowledge, but in con- ©

versation with other zoologists I find that his classification i is not

amined, that his classification is inaccurate. His Sonoran lies half
in the Tropics and half in the Temperate 8 zone. His Transi-
tion is a remarkably distinct life zone, shov ing less transition and

a more distinct flora than any other life zone in his classification,
and it corresponds to the central portion of the Temperate life
zone, is Boreal is equally divided between the Temperate and
the Frigid and cannot by any possibility be separated trom the
Temperate. This will be shown conclusively by my diagrams of
the distribution of families, genera and species. It is a generally
accepted rule that the first publication of an idea or a name shall
be used among scientific men-unless it shall be shown to be funda-
mentally erroneous or inapplicable. Therefore the classification
of Humboldt, which has never been improved upon, must take the

Humid and Arid, and only the latter division is found in our region.
The upper temperature limit of oes life zone is about 60°- annual
mean and crosses our region in a very irregular line, following the
topography from. pc Secteaeerng New Mexico, to the Salt River
Basin, OORT ESE Junction an ingman, Arizona, thence in a

Mogollon mountains and the Great Plateau of the San Francisco
region in Arizona; in the latter, the upper division of the Temper-
ate, namelv, the Frigid, is represented on the high peaks. The

‘north of Mexico this life zone is represented by — fam-
ilies which are found only in that zone, and by seventy-

fam-
ilies which also extend into other zones. The total Aone of

a a ee

PE ee OM Te ee ee ee Te ee ees

SS ee NT ays

oo

the Temperate, 746.
Of the genera in the Tropical life zone we find that 92 range
to the Lower Temperate, 104 to the Middle Temperate, 46 to the

a genus.ranges from one life zone to the other, the species occur-
ring in the other zone are different, though belonging to the same
genus. These species in the Tropical life zone which also occur

06

zones, the Juniper, Deciduous Oak, Spruce and Frigid. In my »
Geography of Utah, published in 1902, I published ne ee

cae corresponding to our Spruce, and Frigid, which in-
cludes not only the Arctic plants but the Alpine plants as well.
The upper temperature limits of the Lower Temperate life zone
are approximately 52% annual mean. The upper .\.iddle Tem-
perate limit is approximately 46° annual temperature. The Up-
per Temperate life zone limit is not much above 32° and the grow-
ing period is therefore very short, belonging to the zone above
it, the Erigid,

s practically impossille for the novice and decidedly diffi-
cult for the skilled botanist to determine the limits of the life zones
experimentally in the field without having some characteristic
plant as his guide. This is why both Merriam and myself have
used certain plants which are characteristic of certain iife zones,
as zonal plants, though neither of us originated the idea. Merriam

zonal plant for the reason that it is relatively scarce compared with
the juniper. I therefore use the juniner as my zonal plant. Mer-
riam has used the Larrea as the zonal plant for his Lower Son-
ofan, which as I have said is the true Tropical life zone in our
region... No better selection than this could be made. In the selec-
tion of a zonal plant for the Middle Temperate (Transition of
Merriam) the deciduous oak is the most conspicuous, but unfortu-
ee disappears both west and north of the Oquiirh mountains.

€ spruce and firs are good zonal plants of the Upper Temper-
ate. The: Frigid or Alpine life zone includes the subalpine and
treeless regions and meadows z the high peaks and Arctic and
needs no charcteristic.zonal plan

Beginning then with our see plants, we find the Larrea or
creosote bush abounds throughout our Trop al region and comes
to a sudden stop in a region where the annual temperat re is less
than 60° Fahrenheit. There will be, of course, mountain ranges
whose southern and hot slopes will have the Larrea growing high
ap. on that slope and low down on the northern slope. There will

o-be places where streams flow down through canons far into
the: Tropical life zone where temperate plants only grow. A mo-

57

ment’s thought will show even the novice that plants thrive on the
_pafticular spots on which they grow according to the climate at
that particular spot, and therefore the Larrea must grow high u
on a hot slope and will not grow along a stream where the climate
is more humid and where cool breezes from above follow down
the canon. So these life zone tongues will be found to dovetail
into one another wherever there are mountains and canons or large
streams. But when their origin is once understood, they need.
not cause confusion.

t almost never occurs that any zonal plant wil! stop off sud-
denly at the upper and lower limit of its own zone. And we must

The juniper makes an excellent zonal plant for the majority
of the Great Plateau, since it begins suddenly near the limit of

the upper limit of the Larrea. Whenever either of these two
plants is seen growing, the traveller may know that he is enter-
ing the Lower Temperate life zone. In southern Arizona, how-
ever, the juniper does not occur sufficiently to be ot value, but its
place is taken by the live oaks, which are as characteristic of
the Lower Temperate life zone there as the juniper is in the Gr t
Basi The upper limit of the Lower Temperate life zone is im-
mediately recognized by the disappearance of the live oaks in Ari-
zona and by the disappearance’ of the juniper and ihe appearance
of the deciduous oak from Colorado to California. So that wher-
ever the deciduous oak is absent, the limit of the juuiper 1s a g00

index of the limit of the life zone. The two junipers which must

California juniper, and they must nc
cedar, which is a juniper, or the thick-

upper limits of the Lower Temperate t :
ular line skirting around the base of the Rocky Mountains from

Cheyenne, Wyoming, to New Mexico,

we co the Snake River and eastern Oregon,
vestward to t forming islan ds on the Lower Tem-

58
perate life floor. . :
e Middle Temperate life zone for the most pait forms belts

manifestly extensions of the treeless region above, should be called
Alpine or Frigid,

PLANT FORMATIONS.

plant life is substantially the same. This may be due to the con-
dition of the soil, such as the various alkaline formations of which
the Salt Lake formation is the most conspicuous, but it is gener-
ally due to differences of climate ard isolation. For example

5)

_ isolation is brought about by a flora being separated from anoth-
er similar one by an entirely different botanical condition. Take
for example the densely forested area of the A palachian Moun-
_ tains, particularly at the south. That contains doubtless quite a
number of trees which would grow in portions of our mountains,
and it contains many other plants among herbs which would thrive
here if it were not for our isolation. This is brought about by the
Vast treeless region west of the Missouri river, whose climate is
sufficiently different from that of the Appalachians to make it im-
possible for those plants to grow there. This then becomes a vast

_ barrier over five hundred miles in width; extending trom the Great
Lakes to the sea, which will effectually prevent plants from go-
ing from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains unless carried
there ty animals, which in a state of nature would scarcely be pos-
sible, or whose seeds might be carried there by the wind, which is
almost an impossibility for anything but the most minute seeds,
and an absolute impossibility for seeds of any size. We therefore
do not find any plants in the Great Plateau which have come di-
rectly from the Appalachians, at least not since the glacial period.

Another kind of barriers is found in the mountain ranges.
is almost a uniform fact that the mountain ranges of the Great

SO ee ee ae ree es

RY ae CE Ae Sa ee

difficult than the transportation of the va
to another, but it still. would be fraught with many drawbacks.
In this manner we expect to find and do find a decided erase
in the vegetation in the valleys as we progress from the rae 10
the Pacific. For example the vegetation of the reso so =
decidedly different from that of the rest of the Great Plateau. The

60)

vegetation of the Carson Lake region is devoid of many plants
growing in the Salt Lake region, and in addition it contains many

Salt Lake City and central Montana, but has not yet reached Col-
orado. Astragalus tetrapterus has traveled from southern Utah
and adjacent Arizona northwestward as far as Cobre, Nevada.
Astragalus scopulorum has traveled from central Colorado to
Thistle, Utah. Many illustrations of the like, both cultivated and
native plants, might be given to show the effect of harriers. The
influence of barriers is very much obscured by slight differences
of climate which have an infinitely greater effect on the plant for-
mation than the barriers. This is well illustrated in the Columbia
Basin, whose peculiar flora is due more to an increased humidity
than to barriers. Another illustration is the difference in cli-
mate between that portion of the Great Plateau east of the Rocky
Mountains and that which is west of them, The Colorado climate
up to the crest of the mountains, is that of the Mississippi valley,
which is characterized by a slight rain and snow fal! in the winter
and a relatively excessive rainfull during the growing season.
The climate of the region west of the Colorado Rocky Mountains

gion they are only semi-arid. This is noticeable at once by the
fact that you can divide these two areas into the sodded and sod-
less regions. There is practically no sod west of the Rocky Moun-
tains, while east of the Rocky Mountains the whole region is sod-
ded to the Atlantic Ocean. The plains are characterized by a
grassy sod in every direction, while the Great Plateau for the most
part has only little tufts of grass here and there scatterd among
the sagebrush and similar shrubs which cover the Great Basin.
This results in a very great difference in many ways. There are
very many more annuals and bulhous plants in our region; it is a
region of omnipresent dust and in the hotter portions, of dust and
sand. There is 1lso an enormous amount of alkali in almost every
portion of the Great Plateau, which affects the vegetation in the
valleys particularly. It makes many of the valleys deserts, whose
centers contain absolutely no vegetation and whose margins con-

61

tain only plants suitaLle for growing in highly alkaline soil.
Under. these conditions. we would expect to find an cxcessive.num-
ber of new species and genera on these alkaline plains, but as.a
matter of fact, we find very few. In all the ages which have
passed since the glacial period, but two genera have been produced
from Salicornia, which are Spirostachys and Sarcobatus, while the
new species are very, very rare. But among the other plants, we

new species and genera. It is in the hot regions of Arizona and
northern New Mexico where the enormous differences in climate
of the plains and mountains and the absence of great water
courses, and the multitudes of scattered springs or water holes

in my Schedule of Zonal Distribution, published 1898. I will only
i important formations. Among the

covers the old bed of the lake in the Bonneville area, and the Pyra-
mid Lake formation, which extends from Walker Basin on the
south to the Malheur on the north, occupying the old Lahontan
B . *

bed formation extending from Glenn's Ferry to St. Anthony. ies
lower Snake river formation is also attractive, whic extends

n ;
lev formations. The Lower Colorado formation is a vast area

and northward to Albuquerque, is w

tion, which covers all those valleys and is characterized by ex-

62

cessive summer rains and a gorgeous vegetation, which is desert
until July, but at the first touch of the summer rains, starts into
life and reaches its climax in September. [hese latter are tropi- —
cal formations. e€ most important mountain formations are
the Colorado formation, the Uinta, the Wasatch, the East Hum-
boldt, the Malheur and the Sierra Nevada formations. The south-
ern formations of most interest are the Kaibab, the Henry Moun-
tains, Funeral Mountains, Panamint Mountains and White Moun-

the Pinals, Catalinas, Huachucas, Santa Ritas, Floritas, Chirica-
huas, and the Sierra Madres of Northern Mexico.

¢

30
20

(3

Familres af Greai Plateau

1
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_ Genera of Monocotyledons,

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65.

Predaminant ceneta.

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66

Species of Pieotytedans,
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FITS.

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67

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rop. Temperate. &
| L.T.| M.7.) U.T.| Pre.
40 ie
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a ee. ‘ +
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46 ; 2 ae
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69

| ; LUPINUS.

Inte o recent numters of Muhlenbergia Mr. Heller begins fis
onslaught on this inoffensive gents. in his characteristic Hellerian
way by trying to name. everything in sight, apparently following

He takes up characters long proven fallacious and uses them as
specific ones such as size and color of flower, length of peduncle,
variation in depth of sinus in calyx, variability in shape of bracts,
shape of banner, etc. One would suppose that a person having
| spent even one season in the arid region would know that the de-
velopment of flowers and peduncles is governed by the humidity
and sunshine during the period of blooming, and that dry seasons
make material differences from wet seasons. But all these things
go for naught with Mr. Heller... Even plants from the same seed
growing together are different species to him, if one has a slight
Variation from the other. Lupinus brevicaulis is the chief center
of his attack this time, though he also “ors 1 Hittle with L. male

SIE AE TT

for such crude work.

| Pentstemoen Eatoni var undosus Jones. 1895.

P. coccinatus. Rydberg, Dec. 1909.
The writer fails to see how Mr. Ry

of deliberate and intentional injustice and botanical

lishing. his species as he quotes my variety as a $

dberg can escape the guilt
piracy in pub-
ynonym of his
d not preoccu-

| died. Heretofore he has been a great s

made many changes of specific names
ties antedating them. For twenty-five years it has been the ios
in America to adopt varietal names when raised to specific rank.
_It would take a Philadelphia lawyer to keep track of the soeeme?
copic changes of front of certain botanists on nomenclature.

SO SR RNS ee SE hee

70°

the Brittonian nomenclature has been at last interred for goo4
would it not be a bright idea to send out invitations to the obsc-
quies, or is the funeral to be strictly private:

t is a fitting end to a system (professedly founded on recti-
fying the injustice to botanists who first described varieties or
species and being robbed of the credit by the transfer to a species
or other genus according to the Candollean rules) that it should
degenerate to bald botanical piracy. Rydberg repudiates the very
system under which he has trained so long (after making about
as many changes as were possible under it) and seems to adopt
such part of the Vienna rules as suits him in order to make a new
name. If anyone were seeking evidence of the personal character
of Rydberg’s work that it is governed more by petty spites than
scientific knowledge this would be ample evidence

e same number (Torrey Bulletin for December) which

e to hand after the rest of this paper was printed Rydberg
iThawirates the point made by me above that when you pass the true
specific limit in any case and make species out of variations the on-
ly limit thereafter is chaos, for intergrades of all sorts abound an
to be consistent the maker of these fake species must continue to

nia’ pecies out of every possible variation between his so-calle
specic s till they are — saa every new batch of species requires
still more, ad infinitum. As the writer has already shown in pre-

vious Contributions Ry yb and Greene’s work on Mertensia
is untenable, and so in the latest Bulletin Rydberg is compelled
to make a new batch of Mertensia intergrades between the former
species and of course has to give them new names for they are as
good species as any he has described, and none of them are any
good. Fortunately some of these are from material collected by
or has sh my boys (F. E. Leonard, etc.) of the old Agassiz club,

e were on our botanical trips about Salt Lake City in the
Nissi atitees.

A FLORA OF CALIFORNIA,
by W. L. Jepson.

‘This beginning of the California Flora is out in two parts,
dealing with the Coniferze and willow family, birches, oaks, wal-
nuts, wax myrtles and nettles.

From the manner in which they are gotten out it would seem
that they are intended more as advertisers. advance shects, than
as parts of a flora. There is nothing to tell how many parts there
are to be or what is the ultimate cost of the completed flora. This
follows the bad precedent of the German books, and most foreign
works that run up so high as to be almost prohibitive in the end.
In order to get at the approximate final cost of this work if com-
pleted as planned we find that the two numbers issued cost $1.70
for 64 pp. These 64 pp. are equal to 4] pp. of Watson's * lora of
California and therefore the Jepson Flora when complete will
te about 1735 pp. which cannot be contained in less than two

u

How Mr. Jepson can finish this work as planned must be an enig-
ma to all except himself, and hov’ he can ever be reimbursed for
the outlay is also an enigma. It is, in the judgment of the writer,
wrong to publish a work in this way for many people unable to
buy will subscribe for it without counting the final cost and_it will
work great hardship on them.

The book is evidently planned on the style of Watsen’s superb
work that will ever stand as a monument to Watson’s genius. It
i i There are
n in fineness
of execution and printing. The heliotype reproductions of photo-
graphs are artistically selected. The typographical work is of the
highest order-and the proof reading excellent. :

In the matter of nomenclature the author follows the sensi-
ble method approved by the best botanists. He rejects the silly
Brittonian dictum “once a synonym always a synonym,” and ap-
pears to approve of the Vienna rules as a whole.

His conception of specific limitation is sound and in accord-
ance with the results of field study. His conception of generic

12

limitation is equally good, so far as one can judge by the limited
genera given. He adds his peculiar method of inserting forms
which has many advantages and is harmless even when not bene-
ficial.

His citations of original place and time of publication and
type localities are excellent, and he follows a sensible rule in omit-
ting a multitude of citations, giving only the most essential.

is work is devoid of the stilted half-breed English so pre-

good enough for him and ought to be for any scientific ‘
constant interlarding with uncouth Latin and Greek derivatives in
the works o wh r had a classical education but came

original author who in fact deserves the most credit, but no sys-
tem of citation possible would do justice to all who have been re-
sponsible for the correct names of all plants.

The chief defect in the work is the total lack of antithetical
arrangement and condensation. There is a skeleton key at the be-
ginning which is good but outside of that there is nothing. The
student has to wade through line after line of matter that is the
same in related species. If the work were properly keyed and
grouped so that not over three species were ever kept in the same
group and all common characters were put in the keys and noth-
ing in the description of the species except what was peculiar to it
there would be no duplication and there would be great conden-
sation without the loss of any essential. :

In the recognition of varieties there is great variation. Salix
longifolia is given with only a single variety while they are legion,
while S. Sitchensis has a number of forms, all but one of Jepson’s
creation. S. Sitchensis var. angustifolia is not properly placed and
probably grades into S. pellita. Salix flavescens is S. Scouler-

73

good species and B. fontinalis is referred to it, while occidentalis
is almost certainly a variety of alba and fontinalis is a form 0
microphylla.

Sakix Monica Watson is kept up though it is not considered a
species. Salix Nevadensis is ignored though it reaches the region
he covers.

He omits all mention of Populus Fremonti var. Wislizeni
(which may be P. Mexicana) though it is the common form of
Southern California.

In the matter of specific description there is not great evi-
dence of extensive field work, the descriptions are for the most

ference between a hemlock and a spruce.
correctness of his treatment of ‘Cupressus. eee
Cupressus species found about San Diego are not men era
does not mention the fact that the writer of this regards

Pinus monophylla as a variety of P. edulis, and that se ee
anists have gone a step farther and united both with P. cembroides

v4

which is probably better still.
Among the oaks one new species is Q. durata which is Em-
gelmann’s Q. Sense var. bullata. Quercus MacDougali and its

mentioned. Quercus Palmeri was never described as a species but
asa subspecies i in the varietal sense and yet he recognizes it as a
species and ignores the older name Q. Dunnii Kellogg. he
familiar chestnut oak is put into Pasania a separate genus though
all but the Pflanzenfamilien still keep it in Quercus. The author
seems to be a little muddled on pp. 357 and 359 where he says
(under QO. Hien “teste spm. in Herb. Royal Botanic Gar-
den Edinburgh, W. L. B,” and (under Q. chrysolepis) “while

The eee makes nearly twenty new “formas,” several new
varieties, and three new species, all of them with parenthetical
Latin descriptions which are assumed to be his own manufacture
but internal evidence shows that they were written by some one
who was not familiar with botanical term

There is one thing that the writer Hal much regrets to see
and that in his reference, on page 342, to Miss Eastwood, who
done many times the amount of unselfish work on the Californian
flora that Mr. Jepson has done. The writer most emphatically dis-
agrees with Miss Eastwood’s conception of species, but she is
honest and a lady always, and this spiteful, jealous slur is too
characteristic of Mr. Jepson’s treatment of people who have the
misfortune to work in the same fie When one is reviewing the
work of another it is proper to analyze his motives and methods
and reliability but in a work intended to be standard if the work of
another is ragged or poor it should be ignored

nother bad feature of his work is that he refuses permission
to see the types of his new species

Mr. Jepson is not as well equipped for such a work in field
experience as Mrs. Brandegee, Miss Eastwood, Prof. Hall, or the
scholarly Parish. The writer had hoped that Mrs. Brand-
egee could be prevailed upon to crown her Californian
work by publishing a suitable flora of the state such as

79

no other botanist could do, for she is in every way best fitted to do
such a work justice, but failing in that the field is open for others.
The writer hopes that’Mr. Jepson may successfully complete the
herculean task he has assumed, and that before it is too late he mav
modify his methods and improve the quality of his work and let
others labor alongside of him without friction. The work can
never become a school manual because of its bulk and cost. There
will be a clear field for Prof. Hall or some other botanist to sup-
ply that crying need of a handy and compact school book on Cal-
ifornian botany.

The writer is puzzled by two things, the constant reference to
the collections of the author and the almost complete ignoring of
those of others especially Miss Eastwood, Mrs. Brandegee, etc.,
and the constant reference to Jepson’s little Flora and the almost
constant ignoring of the great Flora by Watson. Whether the au-
thor is using his own collections to the exclusion of others in his
class work and his own little Flora to the exclusion of that of
Watson in his teaching or whether he considers them paramount
is not stated, but one would suppose that a great work costing
$49 to $52 would have space to refer to the collections of all botan-
ists and to the publications of all his predecessors. If this is his
real plan for the whole book and the enormous amount of botan-
ical work done in the state by others is to be ignored then the book
might as well be thrown in the scrap heap at once. The writer
of this has himself collected nearly two thousand species in the
state alone, and his collections contain several score of types of
new species. Mrs. Brandegee and Miss Eastwood have doubtless
collected still more, also Parish, Hall, Bolander, Lemmon, etc. In
addition to the ignoring of Watson’s Flora we find no mention of
Greene’s Flora Fran. and Botany of the Bay region, Abram’s
Flora of Los Angeles, and Ball's work on the willows.

The work is of course not free from typographical errors such
as Salix glauca L. (1853) instead of (1753). :

The author’s conception of the meaning of botanical terms
might be improved both in this and his little Flora. Samples are
“circumscissile, splitting at the middie;”’ “glandular, ‘bearing
glands or having a surface which exudes a sticky or viscid liq-
uid ;” “habit, general aspect or hue of a plant ;” “lenticular, shaped
like a lens ;” “loculicidal, a capsule splitting longitudinally into the
backs of the cells ;” “indument, with a close pubescence or coat of
_hairs:” “nate, a termination meaning divided ;” “nigrescent, be-

76

coming blackened ;” “pedicellate, having or possessing a small or
short pedicel ;” “personate, when the bilabiate has a very prom-

a beak or spur ;” “‘septicidal, a capsule eae between the parti-

tions of the cells ;” “series, successive rows ;” “spadix, a spike with

a fleshy axis ;” “silique, a 2-celled Sapte ” “terete, round ;” “tur-

gid, distended or in ted ;” “umbel, branches nearly equal and
s

i
men, py ele Spiess: epicarp, indulplicate, een. testa,
etc., which he not define at all but he goes to considerable
length to eeptatit ‘ack terms as commonly, mostly, Coast Range,
interior, etc.

' The figures in the text have one defect in that they are either
photographs ‘whose value is more ecological than taxonomic, or
they are copies from other works and are therefore well known
already.

The announcement on the cover that the papers are for sale
naturally leads to the conclusion that he intends to make the pupils
attending his classes purchase them, a course which made Jepson’s
little Flora financially successful.

bop |

~l

GENERA AND SPECIES.

down to the first word of the description or some prominent word

nus who was called by his contemporaries the botanical pirate of
his time published his monumental work on genera and species
and adopted or rejected the names given by others to plants just
as the whim suited him. As time went on names got into a great-
er and greater tangle from trying to do justice to prelinnzan
botanists. It was then agreed by the botanists of the world that

‘ d that where two names were
published in the same genus the first should stand irrespective of
me other genus which
d that should a name
should not in-
hat might have been applied to a
In other words the older name having gone

species in the genus.
now be used

out of existence as a valid one the same name can

for another species. This same rule also applied to genera.
s’s Genera Plaiitarum was con-

then the Systema was used.
species should be recognized except Latin ones.

78

priority applied up sh year 1753 only. This was a common
sense basis of settlem

n recent years a gai coterie of American botanists appar-
ently moved more by institutional jealousy than by any desire to
benefit botany have attempted by hook and by crook to devise some
method by which to unsettle names and get a chance to rename
many species. One of these schemes was trying to adopt priority
of a name out of the genus. For example, Astragalus Smithii

Aimee This gives a chance to make a new name for Astrag-
alus Smithii even if it has been used and is well known all over

that a genus never was ee ili’ unless it had a species at- °

tached to it. This would invalidate all the Linnean genera of th>
Systema and Genera Plantarum not found in the Species Plant-
arum. It would be just as sensible to invalidate all the Linnean
genera of the Species Plantarum on the ground that no genera
were published there. The attempt to adopt these rules has en-

hardship on our graduates of agricultural and scientific colleges,
and is incidentally a still greater infliction on those who have to
get sense ovt of their pigeon-latin. The writer does not favor
this rule though it would not be any hardship on him, nor would
it he on any of the older men who have had the benefit of a clas-
sical education.

up the subject from a taxonomic point of view we -

king
find that the Linnzan conception of species was nonintergr tada-
tion, and the conception of genus was a group of species (or in

cis),

some cases single species) that could be better comprehended ‘as a
hose parts were more nearly related than to any
others, or sets of groups that formed a composite whole clearly
separable from the nearest related groups. We need not con-

it all in adapting plants to their environment of today and through-
out geologic time.. The former method is unscientific and vicious,

parison, very rarely can any botanist hold five and it is almost
none at all v ho can hold seven. This fact has led our best sys-
tematists to devise elaborate keys for tracing up genera and

keys. This is particularly true of Rydberg’s Flora of Colorado,
Piper’s Flora of Washington and Jepson’s Flora of California.
This is all well enough when there is one prominent character,
but many times a species or genus does not rest on any one ¢ ar-
acter but on a combination of several, and therefore the key is
not only worthless but worse than worthless, and wholly mislead-
he acta oh ae si Hee eae ies of the genus in
i ; e spec

edeopbeint os paisa he oe hand with the keys

h
easy and at the same time the genetic relationship 1s indicated by
the position. Even this is not always possible in a ucigcral
rangement where there are two groups, co-ordinate, branching

80

off from a common stock, or more, as in Astragalus and most of
the larger genera. But this can be allowed for by primary and

and species in the families on the basis of the highest first! This

ing a new key and arranging the families in order from the low-
est up, but puts at least the species in the reverse order, which
is also inconsistent. The new Manual is the only one that does
not follow the unwise method of having only skeleton keys and at
the beginning.

Taking up the conception of genus as worked out by Torrey,
Gray, Watson, Bentham and Hooker, the Pflanzenfamilien, and
most modern botanists we find them grouping the species in genera
and subgenera in the natural way, the scientific and sensible way,
and avoiding the creation of new generic names as far as possible.

n some cases they went too far and in others not far enough as
some put certain species in one genus and some in another such 1s
shown by thorough research. In scattered cases, debatable ones,

)

exclusion of others and other systematists following a different
method and getting other results, but in the main they agreed, the
policy followed by most of them being to keep all problematical
species and subgenera confined to the groups to which they showed
the nearest approach. This was carried to the extreme limit in

Aplopappus, it being considered far better to hold these loosely
ageregated groups in a composite whole than to let them loose in

the family to wander unplaced among the Solidaginoid genera
piles anything to indicate their poe as Greene and oth-
ers have done. Under the Grayan od we know where to find
them, under Gieche’s all is chaos. oie same is true of changes
in other genera such as Astragalus, Oenothera, Ranunculus, the
Umbellifere, and many others. Most of these changes were
made with a great hlare of trumpets and claims of superior wis-

81

dom when in fact none of the men had either the knowledge or
acumen or even a small part of that of Gray, but their claims were
pure botanical buncomb, to deceive the minds of the uninitiated.
we come to examine the proposed new genera we find them
in nearly every case clearly defined a generation ago by others as
groups or subgenera, or in some of the recent discoveries were so
recognized by Gray or Watson. We know the motive in man

against the Grayan conception of genus and species are the very
ones at the bottom of the greatest institutional and personal jeal-
: fair

c
ority ou
means of pu) lication.

aried ac-
cording to our interpretation of the importance of certain char-
acters. and this variability is due to ignorance of the conditions
under which the plants grow, particularly aridity, alkalinity, and
high temperatures. This is more noticeable among species. Let
us take up a few cases of genera. Among the Conifere we find
Engelmann, Small and Rydberg working. Engelmann was a
man of rine experience, wide travel, and keen judgment who had
studied all the plants from germination to maturity and in their
hahitat. Opposed to him are two yourg men with very little ex-

82

perience, little travel, and poor judgment but who do not hesi-

tate to throw Engelmann’s work in the ash heap. Pinus, a well

the beginning he would be pure cat, but if he met a dog which
bit off a piece of his tail he would be catera, if the blood oozing
out of his tail happened to stick it to his leg then he would be cat-
erella, and if he got his tail all chewed off he would be catacauda.
Let us take up Rydberg’s handling of Juniperus. He confines it
to J. communis which he splits up into two species, and he makes
the genus Sabina out of the rest. He of course cannot rest the

the Juniperacee! So he rests Juniperus on the channeled and
awl-shaped and not appressed leaves and sessile berry, and Sabina
on the pediceled berry and scale-like and appressed leaves. Now ~
whenever the Virginian juniper grows in moist soil and shaded
places and develops the awl-shaned leaves it is a Juniperus, but
when it grows in drier soil and has only the scale-like leaves it is
no longer a juniper but Sabina, but Rydberg does not say what
it is when it has both kinds of leaves on the same plant as is

genera all through his Flora of Colorado. In previous papers
have shown how absurd is Rydberg’s attempt to split up Astrag-
alus. s

Now let us take up another class of genus splitters, whose.

83

work consists almost entirely in raising Grayan subdivisions to
generic rank, Jn my review of the treatment of the Umbellifere
in Contributions No. 12 and above in this paper J] have shown the
fallacy of splitting up Cymopterus and Cogswellia and the re-
sultant confusion therefrom. In the borages Gray began the
work himself by splitting off Plagiobothrys on the one end and
Omphalodes on the other from the old Eritrichium, and he fol-

keeping together of all the parts in a composite whole, about as
Gray first put it. Another case in point is the treatment of Clay-
tonia. No-one ever seems to make any stir about putting annuals

dberg of course carries it to an absurdity by making Crunocallis
and Erocallis in addition. The treatment of Ranunculus and Cle-
matis is another case in point, which is adopted by Greene, Ryd-
berg, etc. What for example is gained by making three or four
genera out of Clematis by putting the climbers with small white
flowers in one genus, the large-flowered lavender-colored ones in
another (semiclimbers), and the nonclimbers in another when by
keeping them all in one genus we have a well defined unit clear-
ly separable from all others except Pulsatilla which along with
Anemone occidentalis might just about as well be put in Clematis,
connecting the Douglasii group with Anemone, or up as
a connecting link. Every one knows that there is a question as to
what we shall do with Pulsatilla, but it only befogs the whole is-
sue and multiplies the confusion to disintegrate Clematis, just as
it does only harm to disintegrate Cymopterus and Cogswellia. In
Ranunculus the buttercups are well defined, and even a novice

84

would have no difficulty in placing them, but when the splitters get
at them we find the floating aquatilis in Batrachium though it is
often creeping late in the season, and the creeping multifidus which
is often floating early in the season is placed in Ranunculus. We
find the stoloniferous Cymbalaria in Halerpestes and the semi-
stoloniferous or creeping repens in Ranunculus. We find the
pretty Nuttall’s buttercup in Cyrtorrhyncha and its close relatives
of the adoneus group in Ranunculus, and so even the expert comes
out of it all with his mind befogged so long as he assumes that
the splitters have any botanical judgment worth following. In
the treatment of Sedum and Cotyledon Britton and Rose have
gone to the limit of absurdity, basing their generic characters on
things like the leaf-shape and varying adhesion of the carpels
which are known to have no permanence. Saxifraga, a loosely ag-
gregated genus though well definable on the whole, is split up
beyond all possible recognition and on trivial characters. We
find the heucheroid James’s saxifrage in Telesonix, the delicate
adscendens in Muscaria, the Virginian one in Micranthes and the
very different arguta in the same genus, and the yellow saxifrage
in Leptasea while the very different bronchialis is in the same
genus. All this shows the utter lack of all system and consistency
in the subdivision of Saxifraga. Time and space would prevent
giving all the unscientific work of this kind from the ferns to the
Composite.

Taking up the species proposed as segregates from other well
known ones we find that here is where the ignorance of some of
our eastern botanists is monumental, especially in matters of
ecology, and bearing on the effects of aridity, alkalinity and high
temperatures combined with low humidity. We find them gravely
describing as new species forms of annuals which extend into
warmer regions where they survive over sevral seasons and even
at times become woody below. We find them making new species
out of thin-leaved plants which happen to extend down into places
which have a little alkali in the soil which makes the leaves thicker,
or which happen to grow in a more arid region and so develop
thicker and smaller leaves like Prunus Virginiana which becomes
demissa in a drier climate. or which Secomes Prunus melanocarpa
when its fruit ripens in the normal wav. When Ribes lacustre
ripens too hastily by being nearly frostbitten and its fruit does not
blacken but remains red then it is R. lentum. When the service-
- berry grows in southern Utah on exposed rocks and is scraggly

85

and short branched and rigid and with small glaucous and slight-
ly toothed leaves and has a small berry or two it is Amelanchier
Utahensis, when it grows in a better soil and develops larger
leaves and more berries it has half a dozen names according to
whether the leaves have more or less teeth and the petals are
larger or smaller, and when it grows still farther north where
it has a chance to grow normally it has a new crop of names ac-
cording to the size of the berries, the shape of the leaves and the
petals, till it has more names than a German crown prince, even

traction. The editor refused to retract saying that they never
made any mistakes, and that all he could do for him was to put
him in among the births. This seems to be Greene’s method, the
intergrading forms come in among the births. Whatever may be
our conception of the origin of species it seems to the writer that
the only scientific way is to keep recent derivatives in the same
group, nothing is gained by raising them to specific rank (except
a temporary notoriety of which the author will be heartily ashamed
later). Take for example Astragalus lentiginosus. This is the
most variable of all Astragali, it has both geographical and ecolog-
ical varieties which have been described as species to the number
of a score or more. There is complete transition between all the
forms and the extreme ones are remarkably different from each
other. The common form in central Utah Gray called diphysus.
It grows in gravelly soil somewhat alkaline, is ascending, rather
stout, with narrow flowers, chartaceous 2-celled pods varying from
ovate to round and often has a falcate tip. The climate is not hot.
As we go northward into Idaho the pods become stiffer but never
horny, smaller, more falcate, but the plant has the same axillary
and subterminal racemes longer than the leaves. As we go west-
ward into Nevada where the influence of the humidity of the
Wasatch is not felt and the rainfall is below eight inches per
p: one with the

86

shorter than the leaves. “Fhe pods are chartaceous and globose,
this is my var. ovalis. As we go into southern Utah in the Tropi-
cal life zone where it is much hotter.we find the diphysus forms
with thin pods with a tendency to being narrower and intergard-
ing with the remarkably narrow linear pods of what I once called
A. palans and later put as a var. of lentiginosus. When we get
into the Lahontan basin commonly known as the Carson sink and
its adjacent low areas that run from southern Oregon along the
eastern base of the Sierras to beyond Walker lake we find the thin
podded diphysus forms on the mesas, the ovalis forms in the can-
ons and another prostrate papery podded form along the alkaline
places in the valleys, all apparently intergarding. On the higher
mountains westward we find the closely related A. Bolanderi with
stipitate pods whose genetic ne the writer has not yet
made out, but which is also related to the arrectus group through
A. Weiserensis. When we get on in Death valley slope and par-
ticularly in the Owen’s valley region and Mojave desert and south-
ward we find other variations, due to the intense heat and greater
aridity, to protect the plants from radiation. The prostrate forms
are absent except the var. aridus. The ae are mostly chartace-
ous but when glabrous are papery mostly. e flowers are often
very dark-purple while they are normally toh. colored; and two
orms occur, one with the normal sized ones and one with very
small flowers but intergarding. There are two forms as to length
of racemes, one has long ones and very conspicuous, the other
has short ones and condensed, this latter mostly with smooth pods.
The long racemes have two forms one with smooth pods-and
one with almost woolly nate this is the var. Fremonti. In nearly

When we get into the Needles region along the Colorado river
these forms are nearly all absent and are replaced by robust forms
with large smooth and papery pods in dense racemes. Now to
recognize all these multitudes of forms as species will finally land
us where Greene and his five hundred species of Eschscholtzia are,
chaos. To consider them all as variations, due to climate an
soil, of one polymorphous species makes of them the most interest-
ing and instructive studv in ecology and in addition keeps them
all together where they belong, and does not confuse either the
novice or the expert. This is the writer’s view of the way other
species should be treated, and it removes the temptation from sel-

87
fish men to make new names, for. there is no glory in reducing
_ species to mere varieties. This method of treatment would re-
duce by nearly a half the species of Antennaria, Castilleia, Salvia,
Lupinus, Senecio, Arabis, Draba, Lepidium, aspi, Erysimum,

denus, Poa, Festuca, Agropyron, Elymus, Viola and hundreds of
others. Geographical varieties would then be the most interest-
ing plants to study, and the tracing out ofsthe causes of these
variations would result in the greatest practical good to students
of agriculture and horticulture, and to those who are furnishing
the food supply of the world. It would also bring systematic
botany back 0 a point of respectability and standing instead of
being the scientific laughing stock of the world, as it is now.