STEELE NEW PLANTS FROM EASTERN UNITED STATES. 371 



moderately green looped midvein; florets not far from 20, 8 or 9 radiate; rays oval, 

 scarcely 2 mm. long; achenes strigose. 



Type in the U. S. National Herbarium, no. 648380, collected at Urbana, Illinois 

 (Mount Hope Cemetery), August 10, 1910, by E. S. Steele. Only a single patch was 

 seen, from which 18 stems were taken, perhaps as many more being left. 



The species is named in allusion to the fact that it will soon be nearly or quite 

 extinct. It has the advantage over some other species, however, that it completes 

 its cycle early and produces seed prior to the ordinary railroad mowing time. The 

 station is upon a high swell of ground and the plant need not be looked for in poorly 

 drained situations. 



Solidago moritura resembles S. missouriensis in the fundamental structure of the 

 panicle, the presence of abortive branches, and the narrow tendency of the lower as 

 well as the upper leaves. It differs in its weaker habit, its more slender and longer 

 stems, its slender and pliable ascending (not recurved) branches, its long, filiform 

 peduncles and bractlets and narrower tegules, and its much narrower and much less 

 serrate leaves, and in the venation of its leaves, which want the sharp prominuloue 

 lines so noticeable in those of the latter species. Nor have I any information that 

 S. missouriensis forms patches. By S. missouriensis I understand a species repre- 

 sented sparingly from Illinois but abundantly from the two tiers of States next west 

 of the Mississippi, having the characters suggested by the comparison. An Illinois 

 plant, of which several specimens were obtained on the same trip, has sometimes been 

 called by this name, but is evidently either a form of 5, juncea or a close ally of that 

 species. The new species contrasts with everything of the juncea type by the non- 

 expansion of its lower leaves, but in venation its leaves are better comparable with 

 those of the form just referred to than with those of missouriensis. Our plant is also 

 related to S. serotina and S. rupestris, as suggested particularly by the sharply acu- 

 minate leaves, but is shut off from them by the feeble development of the lateral 

 pair of veins, also in a measure by its rather more xerophytic finish. 



Solidago sciaphila Steele, sp. nov. 



Stem 45 to 80 cm. long, typically stout but with more slender states, Boft, smooth 

 except for a scanty puberulence high in the inflorescence, striate, pale green or lightly 

 purpled; leaves numerous, commonly ample but chiefly in breadth; lower leaves 

 petioled, 10 to 15 cm. long, the blade either elliptical-obovate (this form including 

 the largest states but also small ones), or not seldom rather rhombic-ovate, occasionally 

 oblong, mostly 2.5 to 6 cm. broad, the apex forming in the rounder leaves a very 

 obtuse angle and always a rather broad one, mucronate, below at first curvately nar- 

 rowed, then cuneately decurrent on the petiole and extended as a margin quite to 

 the base, there pilose-cilia te; succeeding leaves with the petioles successively shorter 

 and soon replaced by a cuneate base, not greatly reduced in size up to the fifth or 

 sixth, still 5 to 7 cm. long at the base of the inflorescence, thence gradually reducing 

 as foliaceous bracts to the summit; all the leaves thin, not hard yet with a somewhat 

 parchment-like finish, glabrous except the weakly hispidulous margin, or occasionally 

 with scattered appressed hairs beneath, pale above, more so beneath, there lightly 

 feather- veined and rather densely but not heavily impreesed-reticulate; inflorescence 

 loosely thyreoid, in weak specimens composed of small axillary clusters, usually 

 ample, the branches more or less lengthened, either uniformly or irregularly, or longer 

 toward the base and thence gradually shortened, in vigorous specimens descending 

 in reduced axillary clusters below the middle of the stem, normally occupying one- 

 third or two-fifths of the stem, the ultimate racemules few-headed, symmetrical; 

 heads campanulate, about 6 mm. long; tegules except the basal linear-oblong, ellipti- 

 cally rounded and obtuse at the summit, the medial ridges light green, forming a more 

 or less distinct loop above, the green part showing a scurfy roughening or puberulence; 

 flowers 15 to 17; rays about 5, elliptical-oblong, scarcely exceeding 2 mm. long, pale; 

 achenes minutely strigose. 



