﻿374 Nelson : New Plants from Wyoming 



ing the leaves, 2-5 -flowered (usually 3 or 4) : flowers blue or 

 purplish, large for the plant, about 20 mm. long : style abruptly 

 bent : pod exsert-stipitate, both margins curved or doubly curved, 

 about 30 mm. long or probably at maturity longer. 



This plant was found growing in abundance on an alkaline, 

 gravelly-clay slope, almost devoid of other vegetation. Its near- 

 est ally is V. linearis (Nutt.) Greene, but its habit, size and leaf 

 character are so different that, seen growing, it hardly suggests 

 such affinity. 



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Philadelphia's occidentals. 



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individual specimens, .5-1 m. or more high, divaricately and some- 

 what rigidly branched ; the older stems glabrous with grayish 

 shreddy bark ; the younger stems brownish, finely appressed-hir- 

 sute ; the younger divaricate twigs appearing rigid or thorn-like. 

 5-12 cm. long, bearing 2-5 pairs of leaves and terminated by a 3- 

 flowered cyme : leaves oblong to ovate, acute, 3-nerved from 

 the rounded base, very short-petioled, appressed short-hirsute, 



3-4 mm. long- 



sparsely so above, 



densely white-hirsute as is also the base of the "calyx : sepals 

 ovate, acute, hirsute on both faces, 5-6 mm. long : petals white, 

 broadly obovate, obscurely dentate around the summit, when full}' 

 developed 10-12 mm. long : stamens about 60 : filaments slightly 

 unequal, 4-6 mm. long : styles four, free for from one-third to 

 one-half their length, about 4 mm. long. 



Specimens by J. E. Bodin from Canon City, Colorado, col- 

 lected in 1 890 and by Geo. E. Osterhout from Glenwood Spring?. 

 Colorado, in 1895 are of this species but were distributed as P. ** 

 crophyUus Gray. That species is undoubtedly the nearest all)' and 

 it seems probable that much that has passed for that will prove to 

 be the species now proposed. I have not seen the type specimen 

 of Dr. Gray's species nor authentic ones from type locality but it & 

 certain that these northern specimens do not accord with the de 

 scription of the original southern ones. The description leads one 

 to think that the two differ strikingly in habit, pubescence of lea* 

 and calyx and especially in the number and structure of the essen- 

 tial organs of the flower. 



