I'.Hi Coville Ribes Mescal erium, an Undescribed Currant. 



In 1897 Professor E. O. Wooten collected in the White 

 Mountains of Lincoln County, New Mexico, a currant which he 

 distributed with a mark of doubt as Ribes cereum Dougl., No. 

 281 of his collection of that year. The specimen was remark 

 able in being black-fruited, the fruit of cereum being invariably 

 of a light red color. .Concluding that this represented an un- 

 described species I wrote, early last spring, to Professor 

 Wooten, who courteously loaned me his collection of New Mex 

 ican Ribes. Among these was another fruiting specimen of 

 the new currant, from the Sacramento Mountains, and a frag 

 mentary flowering specimen from the White Mountains. 



As Mr. Vernon Bailey, of the Biological Survey, expected to 

 visit southeastern New Mexico during the summer I requested 

 him to look out for this currant, and he has lately handed me 

 some fine flowering specimens of it from the Sacramento Moun 

 tains. From all this material the following description has 

 been drawn. 



Ribes mescalerium sp. nov. 



Erect shrub, without spines or prickles; one-year-old twigs cream to 

 buff -colored, glandular-hairy, the epidermis on older branches soon 

 splitting and weathering away, leaving the branches chestnut brown 

 often overlaid with some thin grayish tissue; leaf-blades roughly orbicu 

 lar in outline, usually broader than long, 1.5 to 2.5 or sometimes even 

 3.5 cm. wide, truncate, broadly wedge-shaped, or somewhat cordate at 

 base, 3 to 5-lobed, the lobes unevenly crenate-dentate, or even indis 

 tinctly lobulate, with gland-tipped hairs on both surfaces, and on the 

 lower surface some glandless pubescence also: petioles usually a little 

 shorter than the blades, closely pubescent and with a few larger gland- 

 tipped hairs; racemes short, almost capitate, closely 2 to 4 or sometimes 

 even 6-flowered, the glandular-hairy and pubescent deilexed podum-le 

 commonly 8 to 15 mm. in length; bracts obovate, sessile, toothed to wan I 

 the apex, glandular-hairy, 3 to 5 or sometimes even 7 mm. long; flowers 

 sessile or nearly so, the usually very short pedicels glandular-hairy 

 and pubescent; ovary glandular-hairy; tube of calyx (moist) about 5 to 

 mm. long and 3.5 broad, sparingly glandular-hairy, greenish wliilo, the 

 reflexed ovate-oblong lobes broadly acute or obtuse, 2 to 3 mm. long, pu 

 bescent on the outside toward the apex; petals white, rotund, about 2 

 mm. long; stamens with filaments adhering to the calyx tube as far as 

 the throat, the free portion shorter than the anther, this when expanded 

 about 1 mm. in breadth and length; style stout, smooth, shortly two- 

 lobed at the slightly exserted apex; fruit spherical, black, without bloom, 

 sparingly glandular-hairy, 5 to 8 mm. in diameter in dried specimens, 

 the flattened ones sometimes even 10 mm. 



