298 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ABUTILON, Tourn. The Mexican species need to be cleared up 

 before we can well settle those of the North American flora. For 

 this sufficient authentic materials are not at hand. 



herbage destitute of stellular, but commonly with some hispid pubescence : 

 slender peduncles nearly all in axil of leaves. 



A. HASTATA, Cav. Carpels 15 to 20, rather conspicuously beaked ; the dorso- 

 basal portion wholly thin-scarious and veinless, with slender niidnerve, the sides 

 or partitions completely obliterated at dehiscence : seed quite naked. — A. hastata, 

 triloba, & Dilleniana, Cav. Diss. t. 10, 11. A. cristnta & A. hastata, Schlecht. in Lin- 

 n£ea, xi. 210, 214. Sida cristata, L. 5. cristata, hastata, & Dilleniana, Willd. — 

 These I take to be all of one species, of which the larger-flowered forms, with 

 petals about an inch long, are known only in cultivation. The typical A. has- 

 tata, with upper leaves truly hastate or deltoid, and which comes north to 

 Texas and Arizona, has petals only half an inch, and in a depauperate form 

 only a quarter of an inch long. I find the character of the fruit invariable. And 

 this character of the fruit, as verified from the specimen in the Candollean 

 herbarium, also refers here A. triangularis, DC. Prodr. i. 459. — Var. depauperata 

 (Gray, PI. Wright, ii. 2.3) is nothing more than a slender and very small-flowered 

 form. 



A. ACERiFOLiA, DC. Prodr. i. 459. Closely resembling A. hastata and with 

 leaves similarly varying : carpels short-beaked or sometimes nearly pointless, the 

 sides completely obliterated at dehiscence, the basal part of the dorsal portion 

 thin-scarious as in the preceding, but the whole gibbous upper part thicker and 

 with strong and coarse reticulations, in age bilamellar, its endocarpial portion 

 (half embracing the seed) becoming coriaceous and clathrate. — S. hastata, Sims, 

 Bot. Mag. t. 1541 1 ex DC, probably correctly so referred. Sida dettoidea, 

 Hornem. Hort. Hafn. 650, is perhaps the same ; perhaps also A. bracht/antha, 

 Keichenb.; but Schlechtendal, in his annotations on this genus, makes no men- 

 tion of the neat and really decisive characters which distinguish the species. 

 Prom the appended observations, A. hastata, A. Rich. Fl. Cul). 149, must be of 

 the present species. My Mexican specimens are, one from Acapulco (A. hastata, 

 Hook. & Arn. Bot. Beech. 411, at least in part), and from Batopolas in Chihuahua, 

 Palmer, 234 (these with mainly hastate and short-petioled leaves and hardly 

 any cusp to the carpels) ; and from Orizaba, Botteri, 1135, with subcordate or 

 deltoid leaves and distinctly cuspidate carpels. No. 86 of Fendler's Venezuela 

 collection is similar. This has some Maple-shaped leaves. 



A. Arizonica. Slender, a foot or two high, with sparse and few hirsute hairs, 

 otherwise nearly glabrous, small-flowered : petals 3 lines long : leaves and also 

 the fruit (of 8 to 11 conspicuously beaked carpels) like those of A. hasfnta, var. 

 depauperata, but seed invested more or less completely by a very thin and fragile 

 veinless pellicular coating, which is probably of carpellary origin. — S. Arizona, 

 Lemmon, 599. Leaves cordate, deltoid-ovate, or uppermost hastate. 



Var. DiGiTATA. Leaves mostly hastate-digitate, the prolonged middle lobe 

 narrowly lanceolate or linear, and the two lobes on each side linear and half 

 shorter. — S. Arizona, Lemmon, 517 of coll. 1881. 



* * Corolla yellow : calyx shorter-lobed, and less explanate under the densely 

 and stellately hirsute fruit, which it hardly surpasses ; upper flowers naked- 



