250 
** Achenes thickish, oblong, contracted into a short thick beak or neck: flowers light 
blue. 
4. L. Ploridana Gertn. Tall (9 to 21 dm. high), with many small heads in a 
loose panicle, on diverging peduncles: leaves all lyrate or runcinate, the upper 
often with a heart-shaped clasping base: pappus bright white.—Along streams, ex- 
tending from the Atlantic States into Texas. 
127. SONCHUS L. (Sow-rnistLE.) 
Leafy-stemmed chiefly smooth and glaucous coarse weeds, with 
corymbed or umbellate many-flowered yellow heads, more or less imbri- 
cated involucre, compressed ribbed or striate beakless achenes, and 
copious pappus of very white exceedingly soft and fine bristles mainly 
falling together. 
1. S. oleraceus L. Stem-leaves runcinate-pinnatifid, or rarely undivided, 
slightly toothed with soft spiny teeth, clasping by a heart-shaped base, the auricles 
acute: involucre downy when young: achenes striate, also wrinkled transversely,— 
A common introduced weed about dwellings and waste places, 
2. S.asper Vill. Stem-leaves less divided and more spiny-toothed, the auricles 
of the clasping base rounded: achenes margined, 3-nerved on each side, smooth.— 
With the last; naturalized from Europe. 
LOBELIACEH. (LOBELIA FAMILY). 
Herbs, with alternate simple leaves, scattered flowers, irregular 5-lobed 
corolla, 5 alternate stamens free from the corolla and usually united into 
a tube both by their filaments and anthers, solitary style, and calyx- 
tube adherent to the many-seeded pod. 
1. Nemacladus. Anthers entirely separate; filaments partly or almost wholly 
monadelphous: lower lip of corolla 3-, upper 2-lobed or parted. 
2. Lobelia. Anthers united; filaments monadelphous except near the base: co- 
rolla open down to the base on one side, 
1. NEMACLADUS Nuit. 
Small annual, at length excessively branched and diffuse, with minute 
leaves (radical obovate, cauline reduced to subulate bracts), capillary 
pedicels racemose on zigzag branches, bilabiately irregular flesh-colored 
corolla, filaments monadelphous above the middle, distinct anthers, and 
a 2-celled 20 to 40-seeded pod 2-valved (from top). 
1. N. ramosissimus Nutt. Rarely a little puberulent: calyx-tube adnate to lower 
third of ovary: the very small white corolla little surpassing the calyx: filaments 
usually monadelphous for most of their length: seeds roundish.—A species of the far 
western deserts, but represented on the southwestern border of Texas by var. MON- 
TANUS Gray, which is more erect, with larger flowers and fruit on less divaricate or 
ascending pedicels, and seeds from short-oval to oblong-oval. 
2. LOBELIA L. 
Herbs, with flowers axillary or chiefly in bracted racemes, somewhat 
2-lipped corolla split down on the (apparently) upper side (upper lip of 
2 rather erect lobes, the lower lip spreading and 3-cleft), syngenesious 
anthers and filaments monadelphous except near the base, and 2-celled 
many-seeded pod opening at the top. In ours the stems are leafy. 
