312 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



ERICACEAE. 

 A NEW SPECIES OF ARBUTUS. 



Arbutus peninsularis Rose & Goldman, sp. now 



Tree 8 to 12 meters high, the branches widely spreading, covered with smooth, 

 deep reddish bark; leaves coriaceous, glabrous and shining above, pubescent or 

 tomentose beneath, especially along basal portion of midrib, broadly ovate to nearly 

 elliptic, green above and below, 75 to 95 mm. long, 4 to 6 cm. wide, on rather thinly 

 pubescent petioles 10 to 16 mm. long; inflorescence a short terminal panicle of closely 

 crowded racemes, the racemes about 3 cm. long; flowers pale yellow or whitish, with 

 rather large calyx lobes. 



Allied to A. macrophylla, but the leaves with shorter petioles, their blades tapering 

 instead of cordate or subcordate at base and much less profusely pubescent along 

 the under side. This species was listed by Brandegee, in his Flora of the Cape 

 Region, as A. mmziesii, the well-known madrono of California and perhaps northern 

 Lower California, but it differs conspicuously from A. menziesii in having the leaves 

 tomentose and green below, instead of glabrous and glaucous, and in the more crowded 

 inflorescence and larger size of calyx lobes. 



Type U. S. National Herbarium no. 565524, collected near La Chuparosa, on 

 the upper slope of the Sierra de la Laguna, southern Lower California, altitude, 1,350 

 meters, by Nelson and Goldman, January 23, 1906 (no. 7453). 



The species is rather abundant and generally distributed along with the oaks in 

 the upper Sonoran zone from about 1,350 meters elevation to the summit of the 

 Sierra de la Laguna. It occurs disconnectedly here on the mountain tops, like 

 numerous other species whose congeners are absent in the wide desert interval to 

 the northward. 



