Vol. XXVIII, pp. 171-174 November 29, 1915 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



A NEW SPECIES OF IRESINE FROM THE UNITED 



STATES. 



BY PAUL C. STANDLEY. 



(Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.) 



Iresine is one of the larger genera of the Amaranthaceae, 

 being represented in North America by approximately thirty 

 species, and in South America by many others. The genus is 

 chiefly tropical, only three species being known to occur in 

 the United States. Hitherto only a single one, Iresine celosi- 

 oides L., has been reported from this area, but there are two 

 others which are undescribed, one of them an inhabitant chiefly 

 of northeastern Mexico, but extending also into Arizona, New 

 Mexico, and western Texas, and another which is here dis- 

 cussed. 



Apparently no one has ever doubted that the Iresine which 

 ranges from Maryland to Tennessee and Kansas, and southward 

 to Alabama and eastern Texas, is the same as the Linnaean 

 J. celosioides, a species which has a wide range in tropical 

 America, and occurs also along the southern borders of the 

 United States. It has never been given a distinctive name, 

 even by any of the early American botanists who were some- 

 times wont to pronounce a plant a distinct species simply be- 

 cause it came from a locality well outside the previously known 

 range of the species to which it really belonged. Indeed, the 

 present plant seems to have received little attention from 

 botanists of the United States, few of whom have been ac- 

 quainted with it in the field. This ignorance of the live plant 

 is well proved by the fact that all the manuals describe it as an 

 annual, while, as a matter of fact, it is a perennial with long 

 36— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. XXVIH, 1915. . (171) 



