BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 93 



Muhlenbergia sylvatica, var. Californica.— This grass lias 

 the spreading, diffusely branched habit of M. sylvatica, and should 

 probably be ranked as a marked variety of that species. 



The narrow panicles terminate the long, leafy, terminal and 

 lateral branches, are 4 to 6 inches long, the rays mostly alternate, 

 the lower ones distant and subspicate, some of them 1 inch long, 

 the spikelets sessile and crowded on the branches; the outer glumes 

 membranaceous, except the hispid green keel, equal, lanceolate, acu- 

 minate, scarcely 2 lines long, rather exceeding the flowering glume 

 without its awn; flowering glume about H lines long, firm, finely 

 scabrous, acute, and terminating in a straight awn about its own 

 length, sparingly villose at the base; palet about as long as its 

 glume, acute. 



Collected on the San Bernardino Mts., California, by Mr. S. B. 

 Parish. 



NotUlSB^Californicse— The tact has hitherto been strangely 

 overlooked by Californian botanists, or at least, it has been 

 mentioned by no one, that the most common Convolvulus of Cali- 

 fornia has the character of an evergreen shrub, often ascending 

 trees to the height of twenty feet, and showing great lengths ot 

 woody, grape-vine like stems frequently near an inch in diameter. 

 The species is C. occidentalism Gray, supposed by that author to be 

 an herb like C. septum, L., to which it is, in floral character, closely 

 related. The young plants are indeed wholly herbaceous, and 

 when only these are seen, trailing over the ground, or supported 

 on low bushes and flowering profusely, it may easily pass for a 

 mere herb. I have admired almost daily for a year past a beauti- 

 ful specimen which grows by a brookside in the midst of the 

 v llage of Berkeley, and only very recently did it occur to me as sin- 

 gular that a Convolvulus so much like common bind-weed should 

 be displaying its festoons of leaf and flower from only the very 

 topmost branches of a tree twelve or fifteen feet high, and that 

 during the whole year. The examination thus suggested to my 

 mind brought to light the dark-barked, lithe and tortuous woody 

 stems which, in no wise attached to the trunk of the tree, rose from 

 the ground directly up to the lower branches, after the manner of 

 wild grape-vines; and this, now that my attention has been called 

 to the fact, I find to be the universal habit ot the species, except 

 in the case of plants only two or three years from the seed. The 

 most luxuriant growth of this plant which I have met with is on 

 Goat Island in San Francisco Bay. 



On the northern slope of this mountain island is an extensive 

 grove of live oak (Quercus agri folia) of rather small size; but 

 many of these trees have their crowns completely and beautifully 

 mantled, so that their own foliage is hidden, by the masses of the 

 shrubby morning-glory whose corollas are here, as I have seen 



