NOTES CONCERNING THE FLORA OF SONORA. 
3 BY T. S. BRANDEGEE. 
Early in May the writer landed at Guaymas, the seaport of the — 
State of Sonora, Mexico. This month of the year is never a good 
one for observing the vegetation of the region, for the ground has 
completely lost the moisture acquired during the rainy season, and 
no new showers: are to be expected immediately. The time of 
my visit was unusually unfavorable, for the rainfall of the preceding 
rainy season had been small, and the vegetation of a dry earth under 
a burning sun showed fewer signs of life than usual. The surface of 
the country about Guaymas is very much diversified and eminently 
suitable for a varied flora; the city itself is almost surrounded by high 
cliffs and steep hills; the large harbor contains many islands, some 
rocky and abrupt, some of a more gentle and rolling character, and 
some extending into long sand-spits, but slightly elevated above high 
tide. Its waters find their way into numerous small bays, situated 
behind ridges and extending to the openings of long cafions, all of 
which can easily be visited by obtaining the assistance of the clam- 
orous boatmen. Any botanical collector who reaches this place is 
likely to be visited by the same thoughts that often occurred to me 
when, after climbing a high hill, I saw from the shade of some rock : 
the exquisite panorama spread out before me, and pictured the glo-— 
rious time Dr. Edward Palmer must have enjoyed, when, climbing 
the rough hills covered with vegetation, crawling among rocks 
steaming from recent rains, and sailing around and about the islands 
and neighboring shores, he so carefully collected a flora then almost 
unknown and abounding in species new to the scientific world. A 
few plants were found, however, that do not seem to have been be- 
fore noticed. One, that disagreeable bush Alamisquea emarginata, 
was seen on the hills near the coast, and as later it was often met 
with in the neighborhood of Hermosillo, it must be a common plant , 
of this part of Sonora. Helianthus dealbatus, in a depauperate form, 
was found growing on one of the long sand-spits, and as its habitat 
was supposed to be the seashore sands between San Quentin and Mag- 
dalena Bay, this locality considerably extends its range. Palafoxia 
“inearis also grows in sandy locations, and in saline soil near tide wa- 
ter bushes of Avicennia nitida are sometimes seen. 
