Addisonia 59 



(Plate 150) 



ALONSOA MERIDIONALIS 

 Little Cascabel 



Native of the Colombian Andes 



Family ScrophuIvAriacbae Fig wort Family 



Scrophularia rneridionalis Li. Suppl. 280. 1781. 

 Alonsoa rneridionalis Kuntze, Rev. Gen. 457. 1891. 



A perennial glabrous herbaceous plant, its slender stems and 

 branches terminating in long racemes of dull orange flowers. The 

 stems are erect, two to three feet tall, and sharply four-angled. 

 The leaves are opposite, each pair remote and placed at right angles 

 to the pair next below ; their blades are ovate, acute, coarsely serrate 

 or dentate, pale green beneath, and narrowed to slender petioles. 

 The slender racemes bear many flowers, each on a slender upcurved 

 pedicel. The five sepals are slightly united at the base; each is 

 oblong, acuminate at apex, and with three longitudinal veins. The 

 small corolla, only three eighths of an inch long, is very irregular, 

 but symmetric; the tube is short, with the lobes abruptly and 

 widely spreading, the two posterior ones are very short, and the 

 tube split to the base between them; the two anterolateral lobes 

 are ovate, rounded, of medium size, and project lateraly, while 

 the single anterior lobe, united with these for half its length, pro- 

 jects into a broadly rounded free portion. The corolla is dull 

 orange, but, within, the tube is yellowish green. The four dull 

 yellow filaments are short, and the anthers are conspicuous by 

 reason of the membranous dilated yellow sac. The style is stout 

 and glabrous, and the green stigma is slightly enlarged and capitate. 

 The capsules are glabrous, narrowly urn-shaped, one third of an 

 inch long, and open by a slit which divides the septum, or wall 

 separating the two cells. The placentas project into each cell 

 and bear many small, oval, black, ridged seeds which escape through 

 the necklike capsule-mouth. The dead stems persist, and the 

 seeds are scattered in the wind, in the manner characteristic of 

 plants called tonoboles. 



The little cascabel is a weed-like plant of waysides in the upper 

 Eastern Andes of Colombia. It appears to be native there, and 

 doubtless occurred about the dwellings of the Chibchas in the days 

 of their prosperity, as now it grows about the little hovels of their 

 descendants. The genus is South American, some species occurring 

 in nearly all sections of the Andes, and one even in Central America 

 and southern Mexico. The Spanish name, of which little cascabel is 

 an adaptation, "CascabeHto," means little rattlesnake, and was 



