150 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



and hard, is called ''iron wood" by the men on the island. 

 No other small tree of our coast equals this in grace of form 

 and beauty of foliage. The flowers, too, are quite sliowy in 

 their season, the larger corymbs often measuring a foot in 

 diameter. Plate YI is from a pen-tracing of a branchlet 

 and fruit-cluster made by Dr. Kellogg. 



Galium buxifolium. Shrubby, two feet high, erect and 

 compactly branching: branches sharply quadrangular, the 

 uppermost subdivided into innumerable, short, slender, 

 ver}^ leafy branchlets: leaves coriaceous, evergreen, the 

 lowest in fours, those of the branchlets in pairs, all obovate- 

 oblong, acutish, tapering to a short petiole, 4 — 8 lines long, 

 sparsely scabrous on the margin and along the midvein 

 beneath: flowers unknown: fruit dry, minutely hispid, 

 short-pedicelled, solitary, terminal and axillary. 



On rocky shelves in a deep ravine near the sea, Island of 

 Santa Cruz; also a single plant in a similar locality on San 

 Miguel. A beautiful species and a rare one. 



Matricaria occidentalis. Annual, glabrous, scentless, 

 robust, 1^ — 2| feet high, corymbose-paniculate above: leaves 

 2— ;3-pinnately dissected into linear segments: heads discoid, 

 6 — 8 lines high, bracts of the involucre oblong, a line and 

 a half long, scarious-tipped : corolla 4-toothed : akenes sharp- 

 ly angled, and with abroad coroniform margin a little below 

 the summit: receptacle somewhat fusiform. 



In grain fields of the lower Sail Joaquin and Sacramento 

 region, collected by the writer in May, 1886, near Byron 

 and at Elmira and Vacaville. I have seen this plant in 

 earlier years, but was wont to pass it by unexamined, sup- 

 posing it to be some species introduced from the old world, 

 its restriction to cultivated fields of wheat and barley sug- 

 gesting the idea. But on inspection I find it a very near 

 relative of our American M. discoidea, distinguishable from 

 it, indeed, more by its different habit and size, lack of fra- 

 grance, and its late flowering than b}' any striking cliarac- 



