SOME ERIGERON SEGREGATES. 207 





the more because of the few and unequal bracts in £, coniro- 

 verstis. This can not be the Aster glacialis of Nuttall, any 

 more than can certain larger, yet smallish states of E. 

 callia7ithemus can be that unrecognized plant. 



There is another group of large and handsome western 

 erigerons, even more showy in some of its developments than 

 the salsuginosi, readily distinguished from the last named by 

 the excessively numerous and extremely narrow rays ; a group 

 more numerous in species than the salsuginosi, and as much 

 in need of critical investigation. The plants are particularly 

 abundant at middle elevations in the Colorado mountains, 

 sometimes descending to the foothills along stream banks, in 

 moist alluvial soil. A multitude of diverse types in this group 

 went altogether, in the days of Hall and Harbour's, Parrys 

 and Patterson's and my own early gatherings in Colorado, as 

 E. glabellus according to the dictum of Asa Gray, the E, 

 asper, published by Nuttall together with his E. glabellus, 

 being suppressed ; not allowed even varietal rank. The val- 

 idity as a species of this Grayian group that took in one set 

 of plants from the high and dry plains of Dakota and Mani- 

 toba to moist and rich mountain valleys of British Columbia 

 and southward all the way to New Mexico and Arizona re- 

 mained long unquestioned. So long as I knew these beauti- 

 ful things only as we have them in Colorado and Wyoming, 

 I did not question the authority of Gray in the matter, or 

 doubt that he was correct ; and not until many years later, 

 and after the period of my studies in Colorado had ended, 

 did I discover the evident fallacy of the E. glabellus of the 



Synoptical Flora. 



In the summer of 1890, on the unbroken prairie, sparser- 

 grassy and somewhat sandy, at Carberry, Manitoba, I came 

 upon several colonies of erigerons of species wholly new to 

 me. I had not forgotten that it had been from somewhere in 

 just this physiographic region, and not so very far to the 

 south, that Nuttall had derived the originals of his E. asper 

 and glabellus. I made a representation of the plants for my 

 herbarium. On mv return from that season's travels I could 



