23 
slope of the Cascade Mountains, Washington Territory, alt. 3,500- 
6,000 ft.;" T. S. Brandegee, in herb. Sprague. Spermogones do not 
appear. The general aspect is distantly comparable with that of 
Siphula torulosa, and the nearly akin S. coriacea (Tayl.) Nyl. A fruti- 
culose manner of growth is so very remarkable in the Verrucariacei 
that the present lichen must be separated from all sections of Endo- 
carpon, whether or not the generic rank be maintained. It is appro- 
priately inscribed to the unwearied cryptogamist, my ever liberal 
friend, C. J. Sprague, Esq., who has especially directed research 
into the lichen-flora of the Pacific coast. 
A New Species of Oxytheca- 
By C. C. Parry. 
Since the summer of 1881 the writer has had under inspection, 
from two successive years' collections, in abundant specimens show- 
ing all stages of development, an anomalous plant of the Eriogoneae 
group, found in that district of curious vegetable forms^ the Mojave 
Desert of Southern California. 
Unwilling to decide on its true relations with the other members 
of this extensive and peculiar Western American family without a 
careful examination of all the accessible allied genera, I was for some 
time inclined to regard it as the type of a new genus, to which, at the 
suggestion of Prof. Asa Gray, I applied the provisional name of 
Gymnogoniun spinescens, Ined. Under this name, herbarium specimens 
have been sparingly distributed. 
Later, in correspondence with Mr. Sereno Watson on this sub- 
ject, he suggested that by a very slight modification of the generic 
character of Oxytheca, the plant might appropriately come into that 
genus. In deference to his judgment, as well as in accordance with 
my own more matured convictions, I have finally adopted this view, 
and, suppressing the unpublished herbarium name of Gymnogonum 
spinescens, I present herewith a description of the plant as follows: 
OxYTHECA LUTEOLA, fi, sp. — Plant prostrate (3 to 10^ inches ^ 
broad), dichotomously branched from the base, smooth, or with scat- 
tered pubescence on the slender branches ; leaves orbicular to oblong- 
obovate, \\ to 2 lines in width, with slender petioles three or four 
times as long, covered below with dense woolly pubescence, smoother 
above, the cauline in one-sided pairs (the third at each node obsolete , 
or nearly so), one or both passing into linear-aciculate bracts; invo- 
lucres sessile, 5-parted, the spreading unequal divisions resembling the 
bracts, the longer 2 to 5 lines in length (including the slender awn) 
and about equalling the bracts; flowers pubescent, crowded (7 to 15), 
developing centripetally, the short pedicel jointed at the base of the 
perianth and subtended by two bractlets, one linear, the other broader 
and scarious; perianth 6-cleft nearly to the middle, greenish-yellow; 
filaments short; anthers short-oval; styles short, with spreading capi- 
tate stigmas; akenes smooth; cotyledons orbicular, accumbent to the 
longer radicle. 
Habitat.— Growing on moist, sandy soil near Lancaster Station, 
on the Mojave Desert, June to August ; No. 259, C. C Parry, Pacific 
