DELPHINIUM SIMPLEX AND ITS IMMEDIATE ALLIES. 
By CHARLES V. PIPER. 
Delphinium simplex Dougl. and a few related species are distin- 
guished among American larkspurs by the following combination of 
characters: Roots grumose or tuberiform; flowers short-pediceled 
and the inflorescence therefore narrow and strict; sepals erect or but 
little spreading; seeds smooth and produced into thin margins on 
the angles. Four species have been described as belonging to this 
group, namely D. simplex Dougl., D. distichum Geyer, D. strictum 
A. Nels., and D. burkei Greene, the last-named to me unknown. 
In the original description of Delphinium simplex Dougl., Hooker * 
gives the locality as follows: “On the subalpine range west of the 
Rocky Mountains near the Columbia, plentiful.” In the Herbarium 
at Kew are two sheets collected by Douglas labeled Delphinium sim- 
plex. One of these bears the legend “On the subalpine range of 
the Rocky Mountains near springs, plentiful.” Some one has written 
“type” on this sheet, a conclusion which seemingly admits of no 
doubt. The other Douglas sheet is from “ Grassy points of land on the 
banks of the Wallawallah.” On this sheet is written in Doctor Gray’s 
handwriting “The type of D. simplex. A. G.” In the British Mu- 
seum is a sheet of the “ Wallawallah ” collection, but none of the 
first mentioned. As the two collections represent the same species 
no error could have originated by choosing either as the type, but 
nevertheless the plant described by Doctor Gray in the Synoptical 
Flora is a different species from Douglas’s original. Apparently 
Doctor Gray understood the species aright when he examined the 
material at Kew, but later was misled by a Douglasian specimen in 
the Gray Herbarium which he supposed was true Delphinium 
simplex. Based on a knowledge of three species in the field and the 
material in the U. S. National Herbarium the following revision of 
the group is offered. 
1H]. Bor. Amer. 1: 25. 1829. 
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