ROBINSON. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 327 



late obtusish scales. — Ic. iii. 41, t. 281 ; DC. Prodr. v. 677 ; Gray, 

 Syn. Fl. i. 303, including vars. semicalva and Caracasana of PI. 

 Wright. Bidens mercurialis folia, &c, Feuillee, Journ. Obs. Phys., 

 &c. ii. 744, t. 32. — Generally distributed from New England to Ore- 

 gon and southward to Mexico. 



Var. hispida, DC. Prodr. v. 677. Pubescence especially of the 

 upper internodes more copious and not at all appressed : scales of the 

 pappus in the disk flowers attenuate and bristle-tipped : foliage, etc. as 

 in the type. Alleghany City, Pa., 9 August, 1869, Porter ; Milwaukee, 

 Wise, October, 1881, Sherman; Providence, R. I., 5 July, 1892, 

 Bailey § Collins; Pittsburg, Pa., 1893, Clark; Cambridge, Mass., 

 and doubtless widely introduced. The same thing has been recently 

 collected in Central America by Capt. John Donnell Smith, nos. 759, 

 2352, where it is doubtless indigenous. While in general readily 

 distinguishable by the characters described, this variety occasionally 

 so intergrades with the type that specific distinction seems very un- 

 desirable. 

 * * Rays purplish : pappus of the disk flowers but half as long as the achenes. 



G. hispida, Benth. Bot. Sulph. 119. The oldest name under the 

 genus. G. brachystephana, Regel in Walper's Rep. vi. 722. Varga- 

 sia Caracasana, DC. Prodr. v. 676. Doubtfully established at Cam- 

 den, N. J., 15 September, 1870, C. F. Parker. So far as the northern 

 and eastern parts of our country are concerned, all these plants are 

 doubtless introduced ; in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona forms of 

 G. parvijlora may well be indigenous, as Dr. Gray suggests. 



IV. — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND NEW SPECIES. 



Silene sdbciliata. Perennial: stem strict, terete, glabrous, a 

 foot and a half high, enlarged at the nodes : leaves glaucous, slightly 

 fleshy and finely lepidote, narrowly oblong to linear-oblanceolate, gla- 

 brous on the surfaces but sparingly ciliated, 1^-2 inches long, obtusely 

 pointed with callous tips, narrowed below to winged commonly cili- 

 ated petioles; floral leaves reduced to lance-linear acute bracts: flowers 

 rather distant, pedicellate, forming an elongated racemiform inflores- 

 cence : bractlets lance-linear, ciliated : calyx glabrous, cylindric, 10 lines 

 in length: petals deep red, \\ inches long; the blade elliptic, entire, 

 obtuse ; the appendages lanceolate, entire : fruit and seeds not seen. — 

 Type in the Gray Herbarium, collected by Mr. Charles Wright, but 

 without number or date, and bearing only the locality " Texas and 

 Louisiana." It is to be hoped that this attractive species may be re- 



