BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF H. G. BLOOMER. 163 



retrorsely pilose above, 8-10 cm. long: raceme 6-12 flowered, not 

 secund: flowers whitish, 2 mm. long, sessile, spreading: calyx-lobes 

 acutish, 3-nerved, the midnerve branched, the lateral cues simple : 

 petals wanting : stamens short, included, or replaced by staminodia, 

 these elongate-cuneate, palmately and acutely 3—5 cleft, incurved, 

 exceeding the calyx- lobes. 



Mountains near Yreka, California, Greene, No. 906, 30 June, 1876. 

 The material at hand of this curious species is, unfortunately, rather 

 scanty. The flowers we examined were apetalous in all cases, 

 either with normal stamens or with two or more of them replaced 

 by the petal-like staminodia. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF H. G. BLOOMER. 



By Willis L. Jepson. 



In turning over the pages of books of botany in the library of 

 the California Academy of Sciences which relate in greater or less 

 part to the West American flora, one occasionally finds on the 

 inside of the cover or fly-leaf of the older volumes the name of the 

 donor in an old-fashioned hand. Some of these books were the gift 

 of Hiram G. Bloomer, and are of the kind that are now rare and 

 difficult to obtain, including a few that deserve the name of botanical 

 classics. If one be a student of botany, and given to consulting the 

 herbarium, one finds here, moreover, botanical specimens collected 

 by him with the label not rarely in his hand. Such specimens 

 are only occasionally discovered, however, since by some serious 

 mischance ^ a large number of the specimens of early days cited in 

 the descriptions have been dissipated. In any event, Mr. Bloomer 



1 Mr. H. K. Bloomer, an artist of the Bohemian Club, writes me that his 

 father's herbarium of many thousand specimens, which were classified and 

 arranged in a very thorough manner, was presented to the Academy a year 

 or so before his death. That his herbarium, however, was not acquired by the 

 Academy until after his death seems more in consonance with the records of 

 that institution. At the Academy his herbarium is said to have been lost; 

 nothing remains but a beautifully written and arranged catalogue of it, the 

 work of Mr. Bloomer himself. 



