296 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
both surfaces; inflorescence a terminal, leafy raceme, sometimes consisting of only 1 
to3 flowers, sometimes much elongated (in one case measuring 50 cm. long) and bearing 
100 or more flowers; pedicels 5 mm. long, becoming stout; flowers scarlet, 2 to 2.5 cm. 
long; petals erect, 5 mm. long; stamens only slightly longer than the petals; style 
slender, scarlet, pubescent, exserted; capsule 10 to 12 mm. long; seeds 5 to 8 in each 
cell, in one row, each slightly winged on one side and at the summit, the terminal 
portion as long and broad as the body itself. 
The above description differs somewhat from Doctor Kellogg’s rather extravagant 
one. He characterizes it as a tree primrose with a stem 5 to 8 cm. in diameter, the 
floral branches bearing glandular hairs, the leaves sessile, and the flowers in dense 
spikes. 
The specific name arborea is unfortunate, as there is not the least suggestion of a tree 
in either the size or the habit of the plant. 
TYPE Locauity: Cedros Island, Lower California. 
The range and habitat are Cedros Island and the west coast of Lower California on 
the open desert hills and low mountains, along with Agaves and junipers. 
SPECIMENS EXAMINED: 
Lower Cauirornia: Cedros Island, 1896, Anthony 46; March, 1911, Rose 16133. 
San Andrés, September 21, 1905, Nelson & Goldman 7157. San Bartolome 
Bay, April 29, 1889, Pond. Rosalia Bay, 1896, Anthony 46a. 
This species was collected in considerable abundance on Cedros Island by Dr. 
Rose during his recent trip with the Albatross. He found it only after an all-day 
climb. Unfortunately, only a single flower was seen, but fruiting specimens with 
leaves were taken, and these will doubtless be a welcome addition to many herbaria. 
The plant is low, usually 60 to 90 cm. high, a bush with many slender upright 
branches, often forming thickets along the dry ravines and stony hillsides. The 
leaves, as seen, were always small, and no evidence was met that they are ever large, 
so that doubtless the record of their being sometimes 2 inches long is due to a slip of 
some kind. Each leaf is tipped with a large gland, which suggests those found on the 
tips of leaflets in ant-inhabited Acacias. Whether these glandular bodies serve any 
special use in the economy of this plant we do not know. The inflorescence is some- 
what curious, and it is not easy to decide whether the flowers should be said to be 
axillary or, taken together, to form a leafy raceme. The flowering branch seems to 
die after the fruit matures, although it may persist for years. In one case, however, 
a branch bearing perhaps a hundred capsules had stopped flowering and been con- 
tinued as a leafy shoot. This was probably abnormal and doubtless due to its desert 
surroundings. This plant, like so many desert plants, must have a severe struggle 
all the time. The warm sunshine urges it into leaf and flower, while the dry soil 
withholds what little water it has. One day it puts forth its leaves; the next it 
must drop them or die. A day later a shower stimulates it to a new effort. Thus 
are produced these abnormal forms—stunted branches an inch long, which are 20 
years old, and elongated branches measured in feet which have grown in a season. 
Tribe GONGYLOCARPEAE Donn. Smith & Rose. 
Calyx tube produced above the ovary, filiform, nearly closed at the apex by an 
annular disk; calyx segments 4, much shorter than the tube; petals 4, inserted at 
the base of the disk; stamens 8, inserted with the petals, inappendiculate, four longer 
than the othérs, all fertile, the anthers ovoid; ovary immersed; stigma capitate 
exindusiate; fruit immersed, subdrupaceous, rhorboidal, bilocular, 2-seeded; puta- 
men ligneous. 
Leaves alternate; flowers axillary, solitary. 
The tribe Gongylocarpeae, here described as new, seems to be abundantly distinct 
from the Gaureae by its immersed ovary and 2-celled fruit. 
