Vol.1] Hall. — Botanical Survey of San Jacinto Mountain. 75 



Oxytheca emarginata Hall, sp. iiov. Plate XIV. 



Slender annual, 2-6 in. high, more or less glandular-pubes- 

 cent up to the involucres, the leaves and bracts sparsely strigose- 

 pubescent, the whole herbage and especially the involucres early 

 turning red: leaves clustered near base of stem, narrow, oblan- 

 ceolate, emarginate, 4-8 lines long: bracts ternate, or the lower 

 rarely 4 or 5 in a whorl, ovate, awned, united at base except on 

 one side of the stem : peduncles 1-4 lines long ; involucres obpyra- 

 midal, 3 lines high, shallowly 5-lobed, each lobe with a narrow 

 white membranous margin and tipped with an awn a line or less in 

 length: flowers usually 4, on short pedicels, slightly exserted, 

 externally pubescent on the lower half : segments 6, distinct to 

 the base, oblanceolate, fimbriate above into slender divisions. If 

 lines long: stamens 9: akene triangular, enclosed by the wither- 

 ing-persistent perianth. 



Collected on a gravelly ridge near Tahquitz Peak, San 

 Jacinto Mts., California, at about 7200 ft. alt., July 2, 1901 

 (H. M. Hall, no. 2331.) The type is in the Herbarium of the 

 University of California. 



The organ which immediately engages our attention on exam- 

 iug this species is the conspicuous red involucre, which is formed 

 by the coalescence of the five bracts into a concave disk, thus 

 simulating the disk ])roduced by the union of the bracts around 

 the stem in 0. perfoliata. Tha-fe the disk in the proposed species 

 does not correspond to that in O. perfoliata is made ctear, how- 

 ever, when we consider that in the latter it encloses an inner 

 involucre, which itself surrounds a numl)er of flowers, while 

 within the disk of 0. emarginata we find nothing but flowers, each 

 borne on a short pedicel. Moreover, the disk of 0. perfoliata is 

 made up of but 3 united bracts, as against 5 in 0. emarginata, and 

 the stem in the former is continued through the disk, branching 

 and flowering above it, while in the latter the disk is terminal. 



The new species is in reality much nearer to 0. trilohata, 

 although the similarity is at first not apparent. In l)oth species 

 the ternate bracts are united at base and surround the stem 

 except on the one side; while from the axes of tnese bracts arise 

 pedicels several lines long, each of which bears at its end an 

 involucre enclosing a number of flowers. In 0. trilohata this 



