G A T L L A R D I A A M B L Y O D O N . 

 BLUNT-TOOTH BLANKETFLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSIT.'E. (ASTERACE.E OF LINDLEY.) 



Gaili.ardia amblyodon, Gay. — Annual; stems hirsute-pubescent, simp'e or branching; 

 leaves sessile, denticulate, scabrous-pubescent, the lowest somewhat spathulate, the others 

 oblong linear, somewhat auriculate at the base, and clasping; involucre hirsute, rather 

 longer ihan the disk, the scales callous and appressed for nearly half their length; corolla 

 of the disk with short, triangular, rather obtuse teeth; chaff of the pappus lanceolate; 

 fimbrilla; of the receptacle aristiform, unequal, not dilated at tl.e base, mostly longer than 

 the achcnc. Stem ten to eighteen inches high. Rays about twelve. (Torrey and Gray's 

 F.ora of N'orth America.) 



AILLARDIA is one of those genera which we always 

 take up with pleasure. It is a genus wholly confined to 

 the United States, and therefore commends itself especially to a 

 work devoted to plants indigenous within this geographical area. 

 While many of our native plants have been familiar to botanists 

 for nearly two hundred years, the Gaillardias can only boast of a 

 history embracing about half that time, as the first known species 

 was described in 17S6, by Fougeroux, in the "Memoirs of the 

 Paris Academy of Sciences." The first living specimens were 

 introduced into France the year following, from what was then 

 the French territory of Louisiana, by M. Thouin, a professor of 

 agriculture in Paris. Fougeroux named the plant in honor of 

 a Vi. Gaillardet, who is said to have been " a patron of botany." 

 Lamarck, however, writes Gaiardia, and this orthography was 

 adopted in many English works of the past generation, and also 

 by our own Nuttall. 



The original species described by Fougeroux was Gaillardia 

 pidchella. Being a somewhat variable plant, it received different 

 names from the botanists who observed its several forms, and 



