CALIFORNIAN MANZANITAS. 487 



different species, usually somewhat rigid and persistent, 

 more rarely thin hyaline and deciduous, the pair of bracteoles 

 at the base of each pedicel, inconspicuous and evanescent. 

 The pedicels, usually exceeding the bracts, are slender or 

 thickened upwards, smooth or pubescent, in some instances 

 viscid-glandular. The corollas are very uniform in charac- 

 ter and offer scaicely any features of specific value, being 

 urceolate in shape, white or delicately ruse-tinted, deciduous 

 and enclosing a whorl of ten stamens, with appendaged an- 

 thers, and filaments dilated and hairy at base. The single 

 style with its short lobed stigmas, exceeds the ovary, and is 

 more or less persistent on the forming fruit. The fruit, 

 technically termed a nicculanium, varies in size from one- 

 fourth to one-half inch in diameter, is usually orbicu- 

 lar in shape, occasionally flattened horizontally, and deep- 

 ly umbilicate, more rarely oblong and acuminate; it is 

 composed of a thin outer pericarp, smooth or pubescent, 

 occasionally glandular-viscid, the color at maturity is a dull 

 white, sometimes with a reddish tint, whicli soon changes 

 to a dull brownish yellow, and later to a deep mahogany; 

 this encloses within a more or less copious granular sub-acid 

 pulp, a radiating series of osseous nutlets (Pyrence), varying 

 from five (the normal number) to seven or eight; these are 

 either loosely united at the ventral edge and easily separable 

 into one-celled divisions, or the separate cells are irregularly 

 coalescent presenting an unevenly lobed nutlet, or more rarely 

 -consolidated into a regular solid stone; when separable, 

 each developed nutlet contains a single pendulous seed, 

 composed of a slender erect radicle, and small cotyledons, 

 enclosed in fieshy albumen. When the nutlets are irregu- 

 larly coalescent the larger divisions include several distinct 

 and fertile cells, and in case of the complete consolidation, 

 the cross-section shows the open cells with inclosed embryo 

 imbedded in the dense woody tissue, only the larger cells 

 being fertile. That this variable character is not as at one 

 time supposed of generic value, is evident in the fact that a 



