1917] Blake,— Statice in North America 3 
“10-nerved, hairy at least on the stronger nerves or angles; the lobes 
blunt or cuspidate,” and gave it “in various forms” a range through 
Arctic America on both coasts and south to California, Europe, northern 
Asia, Chili, and Patagonia. Later American authors have without 
exception followed Gray’s course in combining the eastern and west- 
ern forms of our coasts, and in the latest work treating of the genus in 
North America, Britton & Brown’s Illustrated Flora (ed. 2, ii. 719 
(1913)), the calyx is described in similar terms. 
Reference has already been made to Kuntze’s proposed amalga- 
mation of all the fifty or more described species in one, the original 
Statice Armeria L. The slightest consideration of any moderately 
large collection of the genus is sufficient to show the absurdity of such 
a course. Although the species are usually closely similar in habit, 
characters of fair significance and constancy can be found in the size, 
shape, and pubescence of the leaves, in the size of the head and 
the nature of the bracts, and occasionally in the pubescence of the 
stem. It is to the fruiting calyx, however, that one must look for the 
essential characters not only of sectional subdivision but also of 
specific discrimination. The constancy of the characters on which 
the subsections Holotrichae and Pleurotrichae are based has indeed 
been called into question by more than one botanist. It was however 
firmly supported by Boissier, whose knowledge of the genus as a whole 
has probably not yet been surpassed, and Druce, who has carefully 
examined the English species as to this feature, states! that he has 
found no evidence of intergradation between the two groups. The 
very confused state of the material in most herbaria undoubtedly 
contributes to the belief that the location and amount of the pubes- 
cence is subject to variation, but in the apparent absence of proof of 
this assumption the opinion of Wallroth and Boissier, the two leading 
monographers of the genus, is not lightly to be disregarded, and the 
evidence I am about to bring forward, derived from a careful study of 
the American species, goes far to confirm the validity of the characters 
on which the groups Holotrichae and Pleurotrichae are founded. 
Careful examination of the material in the Gray Herbarium shows 
that in every one of the thirty collections of Statice from the eastern 
coast of America (including several from Greenland) the calyx-tube 
is more or less hairy between the ribs, at least in the neighborhood 
1 Journ. Linn. Soc. Lond. xxxv. 68-70 (1901). 
