A REVISION OF THE SUBGENUS CYCLOBOTHRA OF THE 

 GENUS CALOCHORTUS. 



By Joseph II. Painter. 



During a trip to Mexico in 1905, as assistant to Dr. J. N. Rose of 

 the National Herbarium, I became much interested in the yellow- 

 flowered species of Calochortus which occur throughout the plateau 

 region. An especial effort was made to collect all forms, each from 

 as-many localities as possible, and also to send to Washington the 

 living bulbs, a few of which have since flowered. There have been 

 brought together with this material the collections of Dr. C. G. 

 Pringle, Dr. E. Palmer, Dr. C. A. Purpus, and others, and these 

 all together form a satisfactory basis for a review of the subgenus 

 Cyclobothra to which these plants belong. 



The history of the discoveries of the several species begins with 

 Humboldt, who collected two upon the table-lands of central Mexico, 

 and described them, in 1815, as belonging to the genus Fritillaria. 

 Sweet, however, in 1828, having had flowers from bulbs that had 

 been sent from the same region, removed the Fritillaria barbata 

 H. B. K. and erected for it a new genus to which he gave the name 

 Cyclobothra; but Schultes, in a monograph of the family two years 

 later, refused to accept this segregate as distinct from the Calochortus 

 of Pursh, to which he referred the two Humboldtian species, changing 

 the specific name in each case. He furthermore described two other 

 species, Calochortus fuscus and Calochortus pallidus. The following 

 year Sweet transferred Fritillaria purpurea H. B. K. to Cyclobothra 

 but ignored the two recent species published by Schultes, possibly 

 because of lack of material. Lindley, however, three years later 

 included all in Cyclobothra and added another to the growing list. 

 Next, Hartweg, collected the most beautiful, as well as the largest- 

 flowered species growing in Mexico, which was named in his honor 

 by Bentham in 1840. Two years later Martens and Galeotti de- 

 scribed Cyclobothra grandiflora from Michoacan. In 1847 S. Schauer 

 published Cyclobothra propinqua, but with no definite locality; and I 

 have been unable to recognize it as distinct from Calochortus purpureus. 



Baker in his monograph of the Tulipeao (1875) published no new 

 species but took up the specific name given by Humboldt for the 



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