22 ERYTHEA. 



flowers are small and short-lived, but inteusely blue. There is little 

 honey, but small insects visit the flowers occasionally. I could not 

 get near enough to make sure, but I think that the insects must 

 strike the stigma first because of the declined style, and it is proba- 

 ble that they cling to the two anthers after the usual manner of 

 Veronica guests, and so effect cross-pollination. I have found no 

 provision for self-pollination. 



NOTES ON WEST AMERICAN CONIFER^.— VII. 



By J. G. Lemmon. 



PSEUDOTSUGA MUCRONATA, SUDWORTH. 



At last the botanical name^ which our noble Douglas Spruce 

 should bear, seems to be settled. When my Report of the Botanist 

 to the California State Board of Forestry' ^vas written, in 1890, it 

 had been decided^ that the specific name of Douglasii given by 

 Lindley in 1833, should give place under the rule of priority to 

 that of iaxijolia, which was published by Lambert in 1803. It 

 appears, that Lambert, in his "Pin us," published a meager descrip- 

 tion under tlie name of Pinus laxifolia, the "Yew-leaved Fir." 

 Notwithstanding that Lindley, in 1833, had named the tree as 

 Abies Douglasii, the "Douglas Fir," Lambert, four years later (1837) 

 in the second edition of his "Pinus," enlarged the description and 

 changed tiie name to Pinus Douglasii, because, as he expresses it, 

 the name he liad first applied "was by no means a happy one, and 

 the more especially as the Silver Fir has been called Pinustaxifolia." 

 Unaware, perhaps, or unmindful of its preoecu patio ti, Dr. Britton, 

 in 1889, restored the name of Uixifolia, and I therefore called the 

 species Pscudotsuga taxifolia Britton, both in the Forestry -Report 

 cited and in my Handbook of West American Cone Bearers,"^ the 

 generic portion of the name having been given by Carriere in 1867. 



But this name was not irrefi-agable. In 1895 Mr. Geo. B. Sud- 

 worth, dendrologist to the Division of Forestry of the U. S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, noticed that the little-known description of 

 this species published by C. S. Ratinesque, in t!ie Atlantic Journal, 



^See p. 130, Pis. 10 and 11. 



^Ed. Ill, 56, PI. 9, 1895. 



