PARSLEY FAMILY 655 



flowers purplish ; fruit 2^2 lines long, the 5 wings of each carpel rather narrow and 

 thick at insertion ; oil-tubes 3 in the intervals, several on the commissure ; seed face 

 with narrow and deep concavity. 



Dry open slopes and summits, 9000 to 10,500 feet : east slope of the Sierra 

 Nevada in Mono Co. ; White Mts. I\Iay, fr. July. 



Locs. — Summit of a peak near Sonora Pass, Mono Co., Brewer 1899 ; volcanic summit south 

 of Mono Lake, Brewer 1825; Cottonwood Creek (head of), "White Mts., Duran 1645. 



Eefs. — Cymopterus cinerabitjs Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. 6:535 (1865), type loc. Sonora Pass, 

 Brewer 1899; Jepson, Man. 731 (1925); Mathias, Ann. Mo. Bot. Card. 17:377 (1930). Aulo- 

 spermum cinerarium C. & R. Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 7:178 (1900). 



8. C. littoralis Gray. Peduncles and leaves spreading or prostrate, arising 

 from very short stems ; leaves simply ternate, longer than the peduncles, densely 

 white-tomentose beneath ; petioles 2 to 4 inches long ; leaflets ovate or roundish in 

 outline, 1 to 2^ inches long, either the terminal or lateral or all 3 leaflets often 

 3-parted or -divided, their margins callous-serrate or -dentate ; umbel compact, 

 hemispherical, resting on the sand ; rays % to I14 inches long ; umbellets capitate ; 

 flowers white ; bracts and bractlets subulate ; fruit dorsally flattened, each carpel 

 bearing 5 equal broad corky wings II/2 to 2 lines wide, the fruit therefore subglobose 

 in outline, 4 to 5 lines in diameter ; oil-tubes 2 or 3 in the intervals, 4 or 6 on the 

 commissure ; seed face somewhat concave. 



Sandy sea-beaches, 2 to 50 feet : Mendocino Co. to Del Norte Co. North to 

 Alaska. IMay, fr. July-Aug. 



Locs. — Pt. Arena, Davy 6050 ; Humboldt Bay, Chandler 1145 ; Crescent City, Davy 5960. 



Eefs. — Cymopterus littoealis Gray, Pac. R. Rep. 12:62 (1860), type loc. Shoalwater Bay, 

 Puget Sound, J. G. Cooper; Jepson, Man. 731 (1925). In 1860 this species was adequately and 

 fully published in the Pacific Railroad Report, vol. 12, part 2. The name Cymopterus littoralis 

 had previously been published (Mem. Am. Acad. 6:391, — 1859) but only as a nomen nudum. 

 A nomen nudum is of no effect (Int. Rules, sect. 4, arts. 37-38) ; it is nomenclatorially invalid, 

 as if it had never been published and, consequently, it cannot run against later valid publication 

 of the same name or any other name. Therefore Glehnia leiocarpa Mathias, Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 

 15 :95 (1928), is a synonym. 



33. ERYNGIUM L. Button Snakeroot 



Perennials with dichotomously branching stems, clustered coarse fibrous roots, 

 prickly involucres and often prickly leaves. Leaves opposite, or the upper some- 

 times alternate, commonly oblanceolate and spinulose-serrate or pinnatifid, or the 

 basal, when growing in water, with fistulous petioles and the blade more or less 

 obsolete. Flowers greenish- white or bluish, condensed in heads; heads terminal 

 on the dichotomously eymose branches or on short peduncles in the forks ; bracts 

 spinose, conspicuous; bractlets usually spinose-tipped. Calyx-lobes (or sepals) 

 persistent on the fruit. Fruit covered with whitish thin scales ; ribs obsolete. Oil- 

 tubes none or obscure. — Species 200, all continents. (Greek name used by Dio- 

 scorides.) 



Biol. note. — The seeds of Eryngium vaseyi C. & R. germinate in the muddy beds of vernal 

 pools in midwinter. By March well-developed plantlets have formed, and an erect and often 

 dense tuft of slender fistulous jointed petioles emerges from the surface of the water. These 

 phyllodial organs function as green leaves until the shoots begin to appear in April; sometimes 

 the later fistulous petioles develop small blades at apex. With the appearance of shoots, ordinary 

 foliage leaves appear, borne on the lower part of the stem and on its upper part as the stem 

 matures in height. These ordinary leaves are expanded structures more or less irregularly pin- 

 natifid, incised or toothed. With the drying up of the pools in late April or May, the fistulous 

 leaves disappear and the flowers appear. As the pool beds bake under the high insolation of 

 May and June the expanded leaves dry up, so that at maturity of the fruit in July or August 

 the plant is more or less leafless. The succession of events as described varies vnth the distribu- 

 tion of the rains and the amount of precipitation. In winters of scanty rainfall when the pools 

 do not fill, few or no fistulous leaves are produced. We have grown seed of this species in the 

 ordinary soil of garden beds and the result has been the elimination of the fistulous stage alto- 

 gether. Expanded leaves were produced immediately. 



