Coville Ribes Mescalerium, an Undescribed Currant. 197 



Type specimen in the United States National Herbarium, collected 

 July 21, 1899, in the Sacramento Mountains, at Fresnal, Otero County, 

 New Mexico, at an altitude of 7,200 feet, by E. O. Wooten. 



So far as known Ribes mescalerium is confined to the White 

 and Sacramento Mountains of Lincoln and Otero counties, New 

 Mexico, and the neighboring Guadalupe Mountains which ex 

 tend across the State line into El Paso County, Texas. The 

 specimens have been collected at altitudes varying from 7,000 

 to 9,000 feet. Mr. Bailey considers it a plant of the Canadian 

 zone. The flowering specimens are dated May 11 and June 1, 

 and the fruiting specimens July 21 and August 5. Dr. Havard's 

 designation of this currant as a gooseberry was probably based 

 chiefly on the paucity of the fruits in the raceme, a character 

 possessed also by JRibes cereum. Although these and other 

 species of the cereum-viscosissimum-sanguineum group, in some 

 of which the racemes are many-flowered, have a well-defined 

 calyx tube like the gooseberries, none of them bear spines or 

 prickles on the branches and they are thus easily separable from 

 the true gooseberries. 



From Ribes cereum our plant is distinguishable in the her 

 barium by the stalked character of the glands on the leaves and 

 young twigs, by the relatively broader calyx tube, its ratio of 

 breadth to length being about 1 to 1^ or If, and by its black 

 fruit. Ribes cereum has the glands on its leaves and young 

 twigs almost always sessile, a corolla tube with the ratio of 

 breadth to length about 1 to 2^ or 3^, and a fruit of bright red 

 color. With viscosissimum the new species agrees in the 

 stalked character of the glands on the vegetative parts of the 

 plant, and in the black color of the fruit, but the leaves, flow 

 ers, and fruit of viscosissimum are much larger, the flowers being 

 about 15 mm. long when the calyx lobes are not reflexed, and 

 the tube about 6 mm. broad, while the pedicels are several milli 

 meters, often 1 cm. or more, in length, and the elliptical-oblong 

 fruit is commonly 8 to 10 mm. broad by 10 to 12 mm. long. 

 The oblong anthers of viscosissimum, commonly 1.5 mm. in 

 length, in all the specimens examined, are exceeded by the free 

 portion of the filament. Mr. Bailey states that the bushes are 

 1:i Her than those of cereum, being commonly 4 to 6 feet high, 

 :ind do not spread out into the broadly rounded and closely 



