68 Covilie New Plants from /Southern California, 



Type specimen in the United States National Herbarium. 

 No. 1653, Death Valley Expedition; collected August 20. 1891, 

 at timber-line, on a divide northwest of Whitney Meadows, 

 Sierra Nevada, Tulare County, California, by Frederick V. 

 Covilie. 



The plant is of especial interest because it is evidently a local 

 alpine species derived not from the circumpolar Arenaria bi flora 

 and A. arctica. but from some local species of a lower zone, 

 similar to A.fendleri. Its sepals distinguish it at once from the 

 circumpolar plants mentioned above, in which these organs are 

 thin, striate, and obtuse. In habit, however, it closely resembles 

 them, having attained the depressed, matted, shrubby form so 

 protective to plants at high altitudes. 



Brickellia desertorum sp. u(*v. 



Shrubby, about 1 m. high; branches minutely white-torn en- 

 tose, becoming glabrous in the second or third year, but still 

 with a white epidermis, afterward gray ; leaves alternate, mi- 

 nutely cinereous-tomentose ; petioles 2 to 5 mm. long ; blades 

 deltoid ovate, truncate at the base, crenate-dentate, commonly 3 

 to 8 mm. long, on vigorous shoots reaching 16 mm. in length ; 

 heads in glomerules of 2 to 4 flowers, on short leafy branches from 

 a main axis, or in the second or third year the branches elongated 

 and divaricate and bearing a single terminal glomerule ; invo- 

 lucre 7 to 8 mm. high, about 10- to 12-flowered ; bracts 3-nerved, 

 with traces of minute tomentum, 1 mm. or less wide, bluntly 

 acute, the outermost oblong-lanceolate, all widely r6curved after 

 the maturing of the achem'a; achenia 2 mm. long, sparingly 

 short hispid ; pappus scabrous. 



This plant differs from B. callfornica in its more shrubby 

 branches, whiter stems, much smaller canescent leaves, and heads 

 smaller throughout. In J5. calif ornica the involucres are com- 

 monly 10 to 12 mm. long and the bracts obtuse, while the achenia 

 are 3 mm. long. 



Type specimen in the United States National Herbarium ; col- 

 lected November 7, 1889, between Banning and Seven Palms, on 

 the Southern Pacific Railroad, California, by C. R. Orcutt. 



The type specimen of J5. callfornica was collected by Douglas 

 probably near San Francisco or Monterey. That species is known 

 in the coast region of California from Mendocino county as far 

 south at least as San Diego. Specimens from Utah and Arizona 



