276 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



STUDIES IN THE BOTANY OF CALIFORNIA AND PARTS 



ADJACENT. 



BY EDWARD LEE GREENE. 



III. 



1. A Revision of 3fyosurus. 



MYOSURUS, Dilkriu** 



Sepals 5 — 7, imbricate, prolonged at base into a pendent 

 spur. Petals 5—7, alternate with the sepals, unguiculate 

 and filiform, or tubular. Stamens 5 — 20. Carpels very nu- 

 merous, crowded or imbricated on an elongated torus. Seed 

 suspended. Small annuals with linear, entire leaves and 

 one-flowered scapes. 



* Spur of sepals equaling the limb and attenuate. 



M. minimus, Linn. Back of carpel depressed, ovate, 

 rhomboid, or variously elongated, with evident costa and 

 beak not prominent. 



M. minimus genuinus. Scape 1 — 5 inches high, rather 

 stout and gradually thickened above: fruiting head long- 

 conical, 1 — 2 inches long: carpels closely imbricated, with 

 margins more or less thickened; costa strong, ending in an 

 appressed beak. 



* A sense of common justice to, and perhaps uncommon veneration for, 

 great botanists who lived and labored before Linnaeus, or contemporaneously 

 with him, forbids my following the modern rule of crediting to that illus- 

 trious name those genera which he did not found but only adopted. I am 

 M illing to be singular in this matter, if so be that in these iconoclastic days 

 no others will unite in the protest that no genus indicated and named by a 

 Tournefort, for example, or by a Dillenius, ought to be wrested from its 

 legitimate and very worthy paternity. 



Issued December 14, 1885. 



