60 COMPOSITE. 



short tube. Hermaphrodite-sterile, with usually a stipitiform abortive ovary, tubular-funnel- 

 form 5-toothed corolla, its short proper tube thickened, and a truncate-bicapitellate style. 

 Akene of the fertile flowers obovate, turgid, free, thinuish, nearly nerveless, the upper part 

 villous with long soft hairs, wholly destitute of pappus ; the epigyuous areola small and 

 slightly depressed. Flowers yellow. 



156. BLENNOSPERMA. Heads many-flowered. Involucre simple, broad. Akenes 

 pyriform. Perhaps belongs here rather than to the Helen ioidca;, where it has no near rela- 

 tives: perhaps it should stand next to Crocidium, no. 186. 



Subtribe II. MELAMPODIEJE. Ray-flowers ligulate (sometimes obscurely so) and 

 fertile, the ligule mostly deciduous: disk-flowers hermaphrodite-sterile. Akenes usually 

 with coriaceous or thicker pericarp, the style mostly entire. Eeceptacle paleaceous 

 throughout, Parthenice excepted. (Artificial group.) 



* Involucre of the several-flowered heads cylindrical or fusiform, of membranaceous or tliin- 

 nish and striate-uerved oblong bracts, not enclosing or embracing the few narrow and 

 somewhat obcompressed akeues; those of the small and flat receptacle scarious. (Allied 

 to the CoreopsideoB.) 



65. DICRANOCARPUS. Involucre of .3 or 4 narrow bracts (and rarely 1 or 2 short and 

 subtending herbaceous ones), at length loose, deciduous in age. Ray-flowers 3 or 4; the 

 ligule very small, shorter than the style, 2-3-lobed, and with hardly any tube. Disk-flowers 

 3 or 4 : corolla with rotatory-spreading limb parted into 5 ovate lobes, rather longer than 

 the narrow tube : style tipped with an entire conical appendage: ovary inane. Akenes di- 

 morphous, one or two elongated to fully twice or thrice the length of the involucre, from 

 subulate to oblong-linear, nearly smooth, puberulent, long persistent on the receptacle, 

 tipped with two diverging or divaricate and stout persistent naked rigid awns or horns; the 

 others shorter, comparatively thicker, often tuberculate-rugose, the truncate apex bearing a 

 pair of very short divaricate horns or hardly any. 



66. GUARDIOLA. Involucre of 3 concave and herbaceo-metnbranaceous bracts com- 

 pletely enclosing 3 or 4 narrower white-scarious ones ; and there are narrower similar paleae 

 subtending the sterile flowers. Tube of the corolla both of ray and disk long and filiform; 

 in the 1 to 5 fertile flowers equalling the oblong ligule ; in the 5 to 20 sterile flowers com- 

 monly several times longer than the abruptly dilated deeply 5-cleft limb (its lobes linear). 

 Filaments very villous ! Style of the disk-flowers mostly 2-cleft at apex, its branches linear 

 or subulate, hispid to the base : ovary inane. Akeues oblong, slightly obcompressed, smooth, 

 the rounded apex wholly destitute of pappus ; the base suberose-fleshy, sometimes as a boss 

 iipon one side. 



* * Involucre of the many-flowered heads broad ; the inner bracts concave, embracing 

 and half enclosing the thick and turgid obovoid akenes : pappus none. 



67. POLYMNIA. Heads hemispherical or broader. Involucre of about 5 loose exterior 

 bracts, and as many or more numerous smaller and thinner interior ones, subtending as 

 many fertile flowers : sterile flowers subtended by mostly scarious chaffy bracts of the flat 

 receptacle. Kay-flowers with a short hairy tube bearing either a short or a long ligule, or 

 none at all. Corolla of the disk-flowers thin, ampliate above, and with ovate lobes. Sterile 

 style commonly 2-cleft or 2-poiuted at the hairy apex. Akenes very thick, short, smooth, 

 marginless. 



* * * Involucre double, strongly dimorphous: exterior of 4 or 5 herbaceous or folia- 

 ceous plane bracts ; interior of a single series of small bracts, which completely and 

 permanently enclose the obovate or oblong more or less compressed smooth and glabrous 

 akeues with a pericarp-like accessory covering, at length deciduous together : pappus none. 



68. MELAMPODIUM. Fructiferous and transformed involucral bracts commonly in- 

 durated, naked or unarmed. Receptacle convex or conical. Akenes more or less obovate 

 and incurved. 



69. ACANTHOSPERMUM. Fructiferous involucral bracts armed with hooked prickles 

 . or spines, forming a kind of bur. Otherwise as Melampodium. Ligules minute, concave or 



cucullate. 



* * * * Involucre broad, of plane or barely concave bracts ; innermost subtending ob- 

 compressed (mostly much flattened) akenes, but not enclosing nor embracing them. 





