403 
cent: seed nearly smooth.—Eastern Texas. Var. GRACILENS Muell. is common 
throughout central and southern and western Texas, and has lanceolate or linear 
less-toothed and shorter-petioled leaves, and the slender sterile spikes (often 2.5 cm. 
long) much surpassing the less cleft or few-toothed fruiting bracts, 
2. A. Lindheimeri Muell. Stems apparently procumbent, with erect hairy 
branches about 3 dm. high: leaves rhombic-ovate (2.5 to 3 em, long), rather 
acuminate, serrate, acute at base: spikes slender (2.5 to 5 em. long); pistillate 
bracts 1 to 3-flowered, ovate, acuminate, deeply 5 to 7-toothed with lanceolate 
lobes: ovary hirsute: styles laciniate above into filiform divisions: seeds minutely 
punctate (4. pheloides Torr.)—Hillsides and canons of central and western Texas. 
** The two kinds of flowers in separate spikes. 
+ Flowers monacious, 
3, A. ostryzfolia Riddell. Stems erect, much branched (3 to 6 dm, high), pubes- 
cent: leaves thin, ovate-cordate, sharply and closely serrate, abruptly acuminate, 
long-petioled: sterile spikes short, axillary; fertile ones mostiy terminal and elon- 
gated, their bracts deeply cut into many linear lobes: fruit echinate, with soft 
bristly green projections: seed rough-wrinkled (4. Caroliniana Ell., not Walter. )— 
Ravines toward the mouth of the Presidio del Norte. 
++ Flowers mostly diacious, 
4. A. hederacea Torr. Slender, prostrate, much branched, cinereous-pubescent, 
29 to 4dm. high, from a woody base: leaves orbicular-reniform, small, long-petioled, 
crenate-dentate: spikes (very rarely monoecious) terminal, pedunculate; the stam1- 
nate long; the pistillate short: bracts cucullate, obtusely 9 or 10-dentate: styles 
elongated, laciniate.—Damp places, from the Pecos to Rio Grande City. 
5. A. radians Torr. Much branched, from a suffruticose base, villous with long 
spreading hairs: leaves long-petioled, orbicular-reniform, ent into 7 to 15 sub-linear 
lobes: spikes terminal, peduneulate, wholly dicecious; the staminate oblong-linear; 
the pistillate thickened; bracts obtuse, 9 or 10-toothed: styles long, laciniate: ovary 
pubescent,—Southern and western Texas. 
11. RICINUS L. (CaAsror-O1L PLANT.) 
A tall stately annual, with very large alternate peltate and palmately 
7 to 11-cleft leaves (often 3 toGdm, broad), flowers in racemose or pani- 
cled clusters (fertile above, staminate below), 5-parted calyx, very 
numerous stamens with repeatedly branching filaments, 3 red bifid styles 
(united at base), and a large 3-lobed spiny pod with 3 large seeds. 
Cultivated extensively for ornament, and sparingly escaped 
1. R. communis L. 
in Missouri and southwestward to Central Mexico. 
12. RICINELLA Muell. 
Dicecious shrub, with the axils of the alternate short-petioled fascic- 
ulate entire leaves producing fascicled clusters of apetalous flowers, 
5-parted calyx, 12 to 15 distinct stamens united in the center of the 
perigynous disk, ovoid-oblong extrorse anthers, 3-lobed (laciniate) stylesy 
and a 3-celled much depressed coriaceous pod containing 3 smooth 
elobose scarcely carunculate seeds. 
1. R. Vaseyi Coulter & Fisher. Shrub with several straight branches (15 to 18dm, 
high) from the base, glabrous or the young branches puberulent: leaves minutely 
puberulent or glabrate, subsessile, fascicled upon much reduced wart-like villous 
