72 LEAFLETS. 
A Rare Swertia 
While of late inspecting with some degree of carefulness the 
North American specimens of Swertia in the National Herbar- 
ium, my attention was held by a very fair specimen from 
Montana which presented at first glance a marked unlikeness 
to all others in one peculiarity of its foliage. The leaves of the 
bulk of the specimens of whatever species, are remarkably thin 
when dry, and devoid of any apparent venation beyond what is 
represented by a single often quite prominent midvein. But 
this Montana plant presents leaves evidently of a particularly 
firm texture, their upper face showing five almost equally prom- 
inent parallel nerves, so that, in case of my finding it unde- 
scribed, I had purposed calling it by a name that would have 
been in allusion to plantain-like parallel-nerved foliage. 
In looking into the earlier, bibliography of the genus, I very 
naturally encountered the name of S. fastigiata, Pursh, pub- 
lished by that author ninety years ago, on a plant from the 
upper Missouri near the Rocky Mountains, therefore from the 
identical region whence this specimen had come. And in his 
diagnosis of his species, brief though it be, mention is made of 
just the two characters my own first inspection of the specimen 
in hand had revealed as those warranting the proposal of a 
species, namely, the conspicuously nerved foliage, and the exces- 
sively long sepals, these nearly equalling the corolla; and Pursh 
says “corollis longitudini calycis,” while in all other American 
Swertias the calyx is notably shorter than the corolla. The 
corollas of our specimen appear also to have been of a light 
blue, whereas in the common Swertia scopulina, Greene, of the 
whole Rocky Mountain region the flowers are of a dark blue- 
purple, very dark. Yet even as to color we have here another 
mark of Pursh’s S. fastigiata, the flowers of which are said by 
him to be “sky-blue.” 
The specimen made the subject of these comments is by 
Rydberg and Bessey, their n. 4699 as in U. S. Herb., obtained 
by them in Jack Creek Cafion, Montana, 15 July, 1897. There 
is no doubt that in this, at least as seen on sheet n. 390,186, we 
have the rediscovery of.a plant long lost, and very likely some- 
what rare, S. fastigiata, Pursh. 
