MiCROPus. COMPOSITE. 2G5 



boat-shaped and very gibbous, enclosing the fertile flowers, and forming a 

 permanent cartilaginous covering to the smooth obovate and gibbous com- 

 pressed achenia. Pappus none. — Low woolly herbs with the aspect of 

 Filago or Gnaphalium. 



§ Fructiferous scales of the involucre not ecJiinate, woolly when young. — 

 Bombycilaena, DC. 



Ic M. Californicus (Fisch. & Meyer) : clusters lateral and terminal ; 

 fructiferous scales compressed-navicular, serai-obcordate ; the inner margm 

 straight, terminated by an erect mucroniform appendage with a scarious 

 apex.— Fisch. Sf Meyer, ind. sem. St. Pelersb. 1835, p. 42; DC. frodr. 7. 

 (mant.) p. 283. 



/i. angustjfolia : slender ; leaves linear, acute ; heads very woolly when 

 young ; exterior or bracteate involucral scales oval, concave, scarious with a 

 linear green centre. — M. (Rhyncholepis) angustifolius, Nutt.! in trans. Amer. 

 2)hil. soc. I. c. 



California at Bodega, Fischer ^' Meyer. /3. St. Barbara, Nuttall .'—Said to 

 resemble M. erectus, but the heads with a more scattered and shorter wcjol ; 

 while Mr. Nuttall's j)lant is more slender than that species, the young heads 

 Avith a longer wool ; but the fruit &c. exactly corresponding to the character 

 of the Russian botanists, who do not notice the leaves, &c. Perhaps there are 

 two nearly allied Californian species. 



64. PSILOCARPHUS. Nutt. in trans. Amer. phil. soc. {n. ser.) 7. p. 340. 



Heads solitary or clustered, many-flowered ; the fertile flowers 8-30 in 

 several series, pistillate, wiili a filiform corolla, each enclosed in an involute 

 involucral scale or chaff" of the receptacle ; the 5-8 central staminate, with a 

 dilated infundibuliform 4-5-toothed corolla, destitute of ovaries, naked. Re- 

 ceptacle subglobose ; the chaff" and similar involucral scales (as the outermost 

 may be deemed) membranaceous, woolly, reticulated, infolded, and cucul- 

 late, forming thin obovoid or somewhat gibbous loose coverings to the very 

 smooth oblong terete or slightly compressed achenia. Branches of the style 

 short and filiforzn, in the sterile flowers minutely hairy. Pappus none. — 

 Very small diffiasely branched and depressed woolly annuals, with the aspect 

 of Evax, &c. (natives of the western coast of America) ; with linear or 

 spatulate-oblong entire and sessile leaves, which are alternate, and irregu- 

 larly involucrate around the terminal or lateral sessile heads or clusters. 



This certainly disthict genus is well described by Nuttall ; except tliat, although 

 he mentions a beak or uncinate tips to the fructiferous chaff in some species, he has 

 DOt alluded to the true structure of this inconspicuous appendage, which in fact 

 exists in all the species. It consists of a small hyaline scale, forming the organic 

 apex of the fruit-enclosing chaff, and, as it were, articulated with it at the summit of 

 the anterior fissure : at first it is erect or spreading ; but after impregnation it is more 

 or less inflexed, covering the fissure like an operculum. In P. tenellus, this scale is 

 broad, ovate, and nearly as large as the chaff itself at die time of impregnation : in 

 P. Oreganus it is similar in form, and in the full-grown chaff about half the length 

 of the fissure ; in P. globiferus and the nearly allied P. brevissinuis, it is smaller 

 in proportion to the chaff, ovate-oblong, and apparenUy somewhat deciduous. 



1. P. globiferus {Nutt. \ I.e.): very woolly, decumbent, much branched ; 

 VOL. II. — 34 



