346 RUBIACEAE. 



vertlcillate leaves, and small white green yellow or 

 purple flowers, mostly in axillary or terminal cymes or 

 panicles. Flowers perfect or rarely dioecious. Calyx- 

 tube ovoid or globose, the limb minutely toothed or 

 wanting. Corolla rotate, 4-lobed. Stamens 4, alternate 

 with the corolla-lobes; filaments short. Ovary 2-celled; 

 ovules 1 in each cavity. Styles 2, short; stigmas capi- 

 tate. Fruit biglobular, dry or fleshy, smooth, tubercu- 

 late or hispid, separating into 2 indehiscent carpels. 



Annual. 1. G. aparine. 



Perennials. 

 Fruit dry. 



Flowers perfect; fruit smooth. 2, G. trifidum. 



Flowers dioecious; fruit hispid. 



Herbage green, glabrous or scabrous. 3. G. angustifolium. 

 Herbage cinereous-puberulent. 4. G. siccatum. 



Fruit fleshy. 



Leaves not acerose-subulate. 



Fruit hispid, white, turning black in 

 drying. 

 Suffrutescent, usually climbing. 5. G. grande. 

 Herbaceous, usually in low tufts. 6. G. californicum. 

 Fruit smooth, purple. 7. G. nuttallii. 



Leaves acerose; plants growing in tufts. 8. G. andrewsii. 



1. G. aparine L. Diffuse, weak, climbing over herbaceous 

 plants, setulose or hispidulous-roughened; leaves in whorls of 7-8, 

 oblong-lanceolate, obtuse or the upper acute, mucronate, tapering 

 to a rather narrow base, 15-45 mm. long; flowers white or whitish; 

 fruit thickly beset with whitish hooked hairs. 



Frequent on grassy hillsides in shady places. March-April. 



2. G. trifidum subbifiorum Wiegand. Perennial with slender 

 rootstock and slender weak wholly herbaceous ascending stems, 

 4 dm. high or less, much branched and intermingled, sharply 4- 

 angled, somewhat scabrous; leaves in 4's, linear-spatulate, very 

 unequal, 8-10 mm. long, obtuse, cuneate at the base, flaccid and 

 nearly smooth; pedicels capillary, equaling the leaves, nearly gla- 

 brous, rarely 2-3-flowered; corolla minute, white, its lobes trifid, 

 very obtuse; fruit glabrous. 



Occasional in shady places, mostly in the interior valleys. 



3. G. angustifolium Nutt. Suffrutescent at base, 3-8 dm, high, 

 with rigid virgate branches, glabrous or minutely scabrous; leaves 

 narrowly linear, 1-nerved, 12-20 mm. long; dioecious; cymes small, 

 in narrow panicles, the fertile ones more or less condensed; corolla 

 dull white, about 3 mm. broad; bristles of the fruit about the length 

 of the body. 



Frequent on sand-dunes along the seashore, and in the foothills, 

 often ascending to 4000 feet altitude. 



