174 OstTERHOUT: HESPERASTER NUDUS AND ITS ALLIES 
While this specimen is only of the top of a plant, having a few 
leaves and flowers it agrees with the description in that the cap- 
sule is not foliose at base. It also has the appearance of belong- 
ing to a branched and spreading plant. The first of the plants 
mentioned above then, is not of this species, but the second one 
agrees quite well with the description and plant of Nuttall and, if 
either of them, is the Mentzelia nuda (Pursh) T. & G. It seems 
to. be found mostly along the foothills in rocky, gravelly soil in 
the vicinity of streams; and Nuttall says of Bartonia nuda “ near 
the Great Bend of the Missouri on gravelly hills.” 
For the first of the species above mentioned then a description 
is offered. 
Hesperaster stictus sp. nov. 
Seemingly a perennial, certainly more enduring than a bien- 
nial, the stem white and hispid, 0.5~1 m. high, fastigiate and 
somewhat corymbose, leafy, the leaves gradually reduced upward : 
leaves oblong, about 1 dm. long toward the base of the stem, the 
lower on short petioles, the upper sessile, sinuate-toothed, obtuse, 
hispid on both surfaces, the short barbs pustular at base: cap-— 
sule 2~3 cm. long, hispid, having pinnatifid acuminate bracts at 1ts 
base: calyx lobes deltoid-acuminate : petals 10, of the same size, 
2.5-3.5 cm. long, tapering to a broad claw of about one third its 
length: many filaments petaloid: seeds subovate, 4—5 mm. long, 
wing-margined. 
Quite generally distributed on the plains east of the mountains 
in Colorado and probably the adjoining states. Specimens col- 
lected at New Windsor, Weld county, Colo., July 22, 1901, n0- 
2488, may be considered typical. Judging from the description 
this is the Mentzelia nuda of Porter and Coulter’s Flora of Colo- 
rado, and many of the plants which have been collected on the 
plains are quite likely the same. 
The genus to which the plants of this article belong was "™ 
published by Sims in 1812 as Bartonia. Torrey and Gray in their 
Flora of 1838-1840 included it in MJentzelia ; but Professor ¥. DB 
A. Cockerell has republished it under the name Hesperaster, in Tor a 
veya, December, 1901. As this will probably be generally adopted it 
will be necessary to transfer another species recently described, 
Mentzelia speciosa Osterhout, Bull. Torrey Club, 28 : 689, and QvSt 
looked by Cockerell. This will become Hesperaster speciosus. 
New WInpsor, COLo. 
first 
