safford: chenopodium nuttalliae 523 



podium labeled "Hi(autzo7itli,'' which proved to be a species not 

 represented in the United States National Herbarium, nor 

 included in Dr. Urbina's Catdlogo de Plantas Mexicanas del Museo 

 Nacional de Mexico. More remarkable still, the name huau- 

 zontli is applied in that work to the European plant, Cheno- 

 podium bonus-henricus, already mentioned; and in Dr. Urbina's 

 list of food plants, published in Las plantas comestibles de los 

 antiguos Mexicanos, neither this nor any other species of 

 Chenopodium is included.^ The writer ventures, therefore, to 

 describe it as a new species and, in honor of the distinguished 

 lady who has brought it to his notice, he proposes for it the 

 name Chenopodium nuttalliae. A more detailed account of this 

 plant, together with several other allied species, will be given in 

 his forthcoming paper on the Economic chenopods and amaranths 

 of America, to be published in the Journal of Heredity. 



Chenopodium nuttalliae Safford, sp. nov. 



Uauhtzontli, or Huautzontli, of the Aztecs; Huauzontle, or Guau- 

 soncle, of the modern Mexicans. Chenopodium. bonus-henricus Auct. 

 Mex. (non C. bonus-henricus L.' Sp. PL 218. 1753.). 



An odorless herbaceous annual resembling Chenopodium album, 

 with upright striate slightly mealy stem and branches and pale green 

 foliage. Leaves alternate, variable in shape; petioles slender, usually 

 equal to the blade in length; blades triangular-ovate or rhomboid, the 

 lower ones sinuate-dentate and somewhat hastate, obtuse and apiculate 

 at the apex, those of the inflorescence lanceolate or rhomboid ; flowers on 

 short branches closel}^ crowded and forming dense terminal paniculate 

 clusters; branches of the inflorescence sparsely mealy or scurfy; sepals 

 sparsely mealy, green, white-margined, ovate, keeled, when mature 

 convex and connivent over the fruiting achene; the latter, loosely 

 covered by the calyx, lenticular or discoid, about 2 mm. in diameter 

 with the closely adherent pericarp pale yellow, rose-colored, or orange, 

 or sometimes dark brown and smaller (1.4 mm. in diameter), with a 

 distinct marginal ring; seed horizontal, shaped somewhat like a minia- 

 ture nautilus shell, in both the brightly tinted and in the dark-brown 

 achenes horn-colored. 



Type in the United States National Herbarium, cultivated in the 

 vicinity of Mexico City and purchased in the market at Xochimilco, 

 November 25, 1917, by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, the distinguished arche- 

 ologist and authority on Mexican history and ethnology, in honor of 

 whom the species is named. 



1 See Anales del Museo Nacionul, II, 1: 503-591. 1904. 



