Addisonia 21 



(Plate 203) 



ALONSOA CAULIALATA 

 White Cascabel 



Native of the Andes of Ecuador 



Family Scrophulariaceae Figwort Family 



? Alonsoa caulialata Ruiz & Pavon, Syst. Fl. Peru. & Chil. 152. 1798. 



The white cascabel of Ecuador is a near relative of the orange 

 cascabel of Colombia already illustrated on our plate 150. Indeed 

 dried specimens of the two seem very like, but my acquaintance 

 with other plant-groups of the geographically isolated upper slopes 

 of the Andes in the two countries made me expect and seek carefully 

 for distinctions between them. In contrast to Alonsoa meridionalis, 

 Ecuador specimens have leaves more uniformly serrate, stem more 

 winged below and finely glandular-pubescent above, anthers less 

 expanded, style longer, and the capsules slightly longer and more 

 tapering. Seeds taken from a specimen collected at Tixan, Ecua- 

 dor, August 23, 1918, by Dr. J. N. Rose (his no. 22310), were sown 

 in our greenhouse, and in due course the discovery was made that 

 the flowers of the Ecuador species are white. So we have a con- 

 siderable wealth of contrast between species which have had a long 

 separate evolution on similar cool upper slopes of two isolated 

 portions of the Andean chain. 



For the white cascabel I am using provisionally the name of 

 Ruiz and Pavon based upon collections made near Lima in central 

 Peru, but as the cool uplands of Peru are isolated from those of 

 Ecuador by a low forest-belt I expect that future knowledge of the 

 two plants will prove them distinct species. We have but a brief 

 description from Ruiz and Pavon and the name caulialata, "winged- 

 stem." The great work of these Spanish explorers, in which they 

 would have both described and figured their discoveries, was inter- 

 rupted by the Napoleonic troubles and never completed, while their 

 specimens still lie neglected at Madrid. Comparative exploration 

 of the Andean highlands is needed, not alone to solve old puzzles of 

 identification but to show us how diversified has been the course of 

 evolution in such plastic genera as Alonsoa and Fagelia. 



The white cascabel is a perennial nearly glabrous herbaceous 

 plant, its slender stems and branches terminating in long racemes 

 of white flowers. The stems are erect, about two feet tall, four- 



