VOL. 5] Notes on Papaveracee. 177 
type, but several forms now known show apparently more 
stable characters, at least the connecting forms are not so com- 
mon. ‘Two of them were apparently known to Torrey & Gray 
as early as 1838, and two have been noted and quite fully de- 
scribed, though without names, several years ago. 
PLATYSTEMON CALIFORNICUS Benth. var. capsularis. Usual- 
ly prostrate with elongated branches rough-hirsute; leaves 
broad; capsule of numerous effete coherent carpels, bearing naked 
seeds. Bluffs of the seashore at San Simeon.* 
This is the form which approaches in structure of the fruit to 
Platystigma linearis; the carpels, however, though coherent on the 
plant are not so in herbarium specimens, the pressure under 
which they are dried serving to separate them. 
Some of the forms which connect with the type have been ob- 
served along the railway from Monterey to Castroville. Near 
the latter place a plant} was collected which had shorter and 
torulose hispid carpels containing seeds. 
Miss Alice Eastwood has collected a form at Bodegas Bay, 
which has very broad leaves and is nearly glabrous, with glabrous 
capsule, and a still closer approach to the type is made by No. 
665 Baker, a plant collected in the vicinity of Stanford University. 
var. nutans a very slender, spreading plant, 
pubescent to nearly glabrous, with narrow leaves and slender 
torulose, nodding capsules that in age spread in the shape of 
the flower of Campanula rotundifolia. 
This may possibly be the form mentioned by Torrey & Gray 
as B. dineare,t but the brief description given applies to many 
variations. It is the common form: about San Diego and on 
many of the islands off the coast. 
var. spherocarpa. Plants tall, erect, much 
branched; leaves rather short; fruit about the size of a pea, glob- 
ular, glabrous and glaucus; stigmas very short. : 
Colusa Junction§ near the railway station. 
*Proc. Cal. Acad. ser. 2, i. 24. 
Zoe i. 279. 
TF1. i. 65. 
Zoe i, 280. 
