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62 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [JAN. 9 
4, LespeDEzA VIOLACEA (L.) Pens. 
Hedysarum violaceum, L, Sp. Pl. 749 (1758). 
Lespedeza violacea, Pers. Syn, ii. 318 (1807). 
Erect or ascending, sparingly pubescent, usually much 
branched, 1°—8° high. Stipules subulate, 2”—3” long; 
petioles shorter than or equalling the leaves; leaflets oval, 
elliptic or broadly oblong, thin, obtuse or retuse at the apex, 
rounded at the base, 6’’—2’ long, appressed-pubescent beneath ; 
peduncles, at least the upper ones, longer than the leaves; 
inflorescence loose, paniculate; corolla purple, 3’—4” long ; 
pod ovate or oval, acute, finely and sparingly pubescent, 
2'’—8” long. 
In dry soil, New England to Florida, west to Minnesota, 
Kansas, Louisiana, and Northern Mexico. 
This is based on “Hedysarum foliis ternatis, lanceolatis, 
leguminibus monospermis’’ of Gronovius Fl. Virg. 87. The 
specimen so labelled in the herbarium of the British Museum, 
while checked off in the copy of the Flora Virginica of that 
institution, so that unless recently lost, must be somewhere in 
the collection, could not be turned up at the time of my visit 
in 1891, soI am not quite certain that I correctly under- 
stand it, although Linnzeus’ supplementary description in Sp. Pl. 
749 appears to point to the plant, at least in part. In the Lin- 
neean herbarium, three sheets are included in violacea, (1) A 
sheet bearing two good fruiting specimens from Kalm of what 
I call L. intermedia. (II) A sheet bearing fruiting specimens of 
L. repens and L. procumbens, besides a specimen of Desmodium 
paniculatum, (III) A sheet not marked by Linnzus bearing two 
specimens of the plant here accepted as violacea, annotated by 
Smith “divergens, Ms. B.’’? So as illustrated by his own her- 
barium the species is complex, but the specimens are not the 
types of the species. 
It is sometimes troublesome to distinguish between this 
species and L. repens. The erect habit, larger leaves which 
scarcely show any tendency towards the obovate form and the 
branching inflorescence with few-flowered clusters, the larger, 
longer and less pubescent pod are characters, which, when 
taken together, will always mark it as distinct. Barton appears 
from the few specimens preserved illustrating his Prodromus of 
the Flora of Philadelphia to have confounded the two. I have 
not seen Persoon’s specimens, but his description points 
satisfactorily to the plant understood by me as violacea. 
