COMPOSITiE. 373 



style-tips obtuse. — Common in low grounds along rivers and on the bor- 

 ders of marshes. Aug. — Oct. 



17. SOLII)A.(tO, Vaillant (Golden Rod). Strict simple-stemmed 

 perennials, with alternate more or less serrate leaves. Inflorescence a 

 terminal cluster of many small heads, usually disposed in scorpioid 

 racemes and forming a panicle; otherwise forming a thyrsus. Involucre 

 narrow ; bracts in two or more series, neither herbaceous tipped or 

 glutinous. Flowers all permanently yellow; the outer and ligulate 

 short, the inner narrow-funnelform. Style-appendages flattened, lance- 

 olate. Achenes terete or prismatic, 5 — 10-nerved, glabrous or pubescent. 

 Pappus a series of unequal scabrous permanently white bristles. 



* Heads numerous, small, in a more or less pyramidal panicle of secured 



racemes. 



1. S. seinperrirens, Linn. Sp. PI. ii. 878 (1753). Bright green and 

 glabrous, leafy throughout, 2—8 ft. high: leaves rather fleshy, lanceolate 

 to linear, the upper acute, lower obtuse, all entire: panicle narrow, 

 dense, virgate: heads 3 — i lines long: bracts of involucre lanceolate, 

 scabrous-ciliolate : rays 8— 10, rather large, golden yellow: achenes 

 minutely pubescent. —Marshes about San Francisco, at Laguna Honda 

 and in similar situations southward. Aug.— Nov. 



2. S. Guiradonis, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. vi. 543 (1865). Glabrous, 

 slender, 2 — 3 ft. high: leaves bright green, thickish, entire; the lowest 6 

 in. long, less than ^2 ^^- wide, lanceolate or oblanceolate, tapering grad- 

 ually into a long narrow base or margined petiole, somewhat 3-ribbed: 

 heads few, in a narrow virgate panicle: involucral bracts lanceolate- 

 subulate: rays 8 or 9, small: disk-flowers 10 or 12: achenes nearly gla- 

 brous. — Along streams in the mountains of Fresno Co. and southward, 

 Guirado, Ruthrock. 



3. S. spectabilis, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 193 (1882). Two feet 

 high: heads many, in a long and narrow compound thyrsus: herbage 

 light green, seeming glabrous, but with a scattered short rough pubes- 

 cence under a lens: lower and radical leaves elongated, oblanceolate, 

 narrowed to a petiole, often 1 inch wide and 3-nerved, entire or with a 

 few serratures; cauline lanceolate, or the small upper ones linear, acute: 

 involucral bracts mostly obtuse. — Plumas Co., Mrs. Austin, and else- 

 where along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. 



4. S. elon^ata, Nutt. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. vii. 327 ( 1 840 j. Puber- 

 ulent, 1 to 2 ft. high equably leafy up to the long panicle: leaves thin- 

 nish, lanceolate, acute, sparingly serrate, 2 — 3 in. long: branches of pan- 

 icle scarcely secund, ascending; heads small; bracts of involucre linear, 



