Addisonia 29 



(Plate 135) 



HELIOTROPIUM LEAVENWORTHII 

 Yellow Heliotrope 



Native oj southern Florida 

 Family Heliotropiaceae Heliotrope Family 



Heliotropium polyphyllum Leavenworthii A. Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. 10: 49. 1874. 

 Heliotr opium Leavenworthii Torr.; Small, Fl. SE. U. S. 1006. 1903. 



Plants fully a yard tall or less, simple, or sparingly branched and 

 erect and sometimes strict, or widely branched at the base with 

 the branches spreading and decumbent, copiously strigose with 

 white or whitish hairs. The bark of the woody stems is ultimately 

 brown, exfoliating or sometimes in wet places persistent and cross- 

 checked. The leaves are alternate, deciduous from the main stem 

 and the branches, rather close together or even crowded on the 

 branchlets, one inch long or less. The blades are spatulate at the 

 base of the stem to linear or linear-lanceolate higher up and on 

 the branches, rather closely short-strigose with white or whitish 

 hairs, acute or short-acuminate at the apex, flat or sometimes 

 slightly revolute, short-petioled. The flowers are borne in scorpioid 

 racemes, which terminate the stem and the branches and are quite 

 compact near the tip of the rachis. The bracts are lanceolate, ovate- 

 lanceolate, or elliptic, acute or slightly acuminate, relatively 

 shorter and broader than the leaves, and pubescent like them. 

 The flower-stalks are short and stout. The calyx is closely strigose, 

 with a short turbinate tube and five lobes. The lobes are un- 

 equal and much longer than the tube ; the two outer are elliptic- 

 lanceolate and acute, the three inner lanceolate or linear-lanceolate 

 and short-acuminate. The corolla is golden-yellow, rather closely 

 strigose without; the tube is about as long as the calyx, slightly 

 swollen at the middle; the limb is five-lobed, fully a quarter of an 

 inch in diameter, often slightly darker at the center where the 

 throat is mainly closed by retrorse appendages with ovate obtuse 

 lobes which are about as long as the rest of the limb. The five 

 stamens are included in the corolla-tube, to which the filaments 

 are adnate for over one half their length, the free portion very 

 slender and slightly shorter than the anther. The anthers are 

 conic-lanceolate, about one twentieth of an inch long, acuminate. 

 The gynoecium is included in the corolla-tube. The ovary is broadly 

 ovoid, seated in an obscure annular disk, surmounted by a slender 

 cylindric style. The stigma is annular and surmounted by a conic 

 appendage. The fruit is a globose-ovoid obscurely four-sided 

 nut, often minutely pubescent, commonly abruptly pointed at the 

 apex, the nutlets tardily separating, obliquely ovoid. 



