VOL. 5 | Southern California Botany. 73 
are strictly spring flowering, ripening their fruit by early summer. 
Our species is the most abundant Echinocactus of the desert 
region, occurring on hillsides or gravelly plains at 500-3,500 ft. 
alt., always present in suitable situations, often in great numbers. 
Usually columnar, with an extreme height of 8~9 ft., often, always 
when young, globose, or even clavate, rarely polycephalous from 
the base, or even near the summit; ribs indefinitely numerous; 
central spines 4, varying in width and absolute and relative 
length, curved or somewhat hooked, or twisted and interlocked, 
red, less frequently yellow, or even white; radial spines numer- 
ous, slender, more or less flexuous, mostly light-colored; flowers 
yellow; fruit dry. ' 
OpunTIA Parryi Engelm, Am. Jour. Sci. Ser. 2, 14.339. 
This species was founded on a plant observed on the “‘eastern 
slope of the mountains near San Felipe’’ by Dr. Parry, and the 
brief description was taken from his notes.* Dr. Engelmann 
probably never saw the specimens, which, if any there were, must 
have been among those unfortunately lost on the Isthmus of 
Panama.}+ Thereare none in the Engelmann Herbarium.{ Some 
uncertainty exists as to the identity of Parry’s plant with one 
subsequently collected by Bigelow ‘‘on gravelly plains 30 miles 
west of the Colorado, near the Mojave River,’’ § but as this was 
described more fully and figured, and as Bigelow’s specimen is 
still preserved, it may well be considered as typical of the species. 
Mr. A. H. Alverson collected in 1895 at McHaney’s Mine, in 
the Colorado Desert, and has since had in cultivation, a plant 
which perfectly agrees with the description and figures cited, and 
which has the habit of growth in prostrate mats shown by an 
engraving in the North American Fauna. || 
GaRRYA VEATCH Kellogg, Proc. Cal. Acad. 5.40. Shrub 
2-3 m. high; leaves elliptical, or the smaller lanceolate, 2-5 cm. 
long, the edges revolute, glabrous above, and beneath clothed 
*Engelm. Cact. Mex. Bound. 53. 
+ Parry, Pro. Davenp. Acad, 2.280. 
t Coulter, Contrib. U, S. Nat. Herb. 3.441. 
2Engelm. & Bigelow, Pac. R. Rep. 4. 43, t. 22, f. 4-7- 
Merriam, N. Am. Fauna 7. 347, f. 10. 
