24 



It is a matter of no importance to the botanical world whether 

 one or the other of us is "the more accurate", it is after the facts 

 and wants the problems of systematic botany settled, not be- 

 fogged, and that too in the full light of genetic relationship, ecol- 

 ogy and geological history, and not in the line of the number of 



bugholes in the leaves or the rulings of a metropolitan inspiration- 

 al autocrat. 



Dasylirion Zucc. is not properly derived. It is from the Greek 

 dasus and leirion, and therefore should be Dasyleirion. This brings 

 the pronunciation in line with the Greek. 



StestahTHIUM and Stexaxthella. Rydberg in Torr. Bull. 27 

 530 t tempts to make a new genus of Stenanthium, calling it Ste- 

 naiithella. His characters for it are: superior ovary, perfect flow- 

 ers campannlate and with conspicuously reflexed lobes, and differ- 

 ent habit. How a person can blunder so and with specimens be- 

 fore him and supposedly a little field work is hard to see. For 

 Stenanthium he gives: ovary partly inferior, polygamous flowers 

 not campannlate and without reflexed tips. Stenanthium occiden- 

 tal (which he puts ia Stehanthella) is polygamous, I have ample 

 material gathered and studied by mo, in the field in all stages. 

 The fully mature pod is 4-6 mm. long and adnate as he would 

 find if he took the trouble to dissect the so-called obconical stipe. 

 The pod appears lanceolate but is really fusiform with the cavity 



thium figured as having campanulate flowers with "reflexed tips. 

 In S. occidental the segments form a narrower flower than in ei- 

 ther of the other species, but that is all. The only characters on 

 which he could possibly found his genus he omits: the drooping 

 flowers in simple uot compound racemes, and leaves normally Ian- 

 ceolate and acuminate at both ends, but these are not good gener- 

 ic characters. Another peculiar feature of S. occidentale is that 

 the segments are not only "withering persistent" as in many other 

 Liliacea but enlarge or elongate with age becoming green and re- 

 maining so till the p„ds mature. The segments retain their real 

 shape but a day ami then the margins inroll. The erect part of 

 the segments which form the bell part of the flower is broadly ob- 

 ong and with hyaline margins, it then narrows abruptly to the 



broadly lanceolate to long-linear and thick tip which in flower is 



reflexed and ia erect in fruit and green, in the sterile flowers they 



are light-colored, hyaline and do not elongate, the ferti 

 dark-pnrple or a lurid-green. The leaves are generally 



ile ones are 



ally conspicu- 



