THE PLANT WORLD 109 



Briefer Articles. 



A HYBRID RUDBECKIA. 



Hybrids among our wild flowers sometimes occur, j^et to find one is 

 not a common occurrence, and when a collector meets one of undoubted 

 character face to face he feels that his find may be worthy of note. 



In the summer of 1902, while collecting along the Eagle River on the 

 western slope of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, I chanced on a hybrid 

 Rudbeckia. It was growing among Rudbeckia laciniata L,. and Ritdbeckia 

 tnoiitana Gray, and partook so much of the characters of each that its true 

 origin could not be mistaken. 



Rudbeckia laciniata — what has for a long time passed for that — is a 

 beautiful plant with a wealth of flowers in July and August. It is tall 

 and graceful with ample glaucous foliage. The flowers on long peduncles 

 have long yellow rays and the cone is yellow. It is found both on the 

 eastern and western slope of the Rocky Mountains growing in the moist 

 ravines and along the banks of streams. 



Rudbeckia montana is about the same in height and of similar foliage 

 but has fewer flowers. It is a peculiar and striking plant when in blossom, 

 on account of the heads of flowers. These, on peduncles a foot long or 

 more, are black cones one and one-half inches in height by three-quarters 

 of an inch in diameter and without rays. The black cone standing at 

 the top of the long naked peduncle gives the strange appearance. It 

 grows in situations similar to those of Rudbeckia laciniata, but is a much 

 rarer plant and I have found it only on the western slope of the mountains. 



Along a little springy run, in the location I have indicated, both of 

 these plants were growing and among them was the hybrid. It was of 

 about the same height and the foliage was not different from that of 

 Rudbeckia laciniata, but the difference was in the heads of flowers. Unlike 

 Rudbeckia montana these had yellow rays, quite like Rudbeckia laciniata; 

 but unlike it the cone was dark purple — not quite so dark as those of 

 R^idbeckia mo7itana. 



Had one found it growing by itself at a distance from other plants it 

 would have seemed to be an undescribed species, but appearing as it did 

 among the two species it is unquestionably a hybrid. 



New Windsor, Col. GEO. E. OSTERHOUT. 



SLEEPY GRASS. 



In a recent number of Science Mr. Vernon Bailey, chief field naturalist 

 of the U. S. Biological Surv^ey, relates his experience with the so-called 

 sleepy grass iStipa Vaseyi) in the Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico. 



