Morris : North American Plantaginaceae 523 



P/anfag-o Bt^e^oviz A. Gray requires little discussion. With a 

 range from south central Cahfornia northward into British Co- 

 lumbia, and only in low valleys and along the seacoast, it is read- 

 ily distinguished from the other annuals of the genus. In the 

 low valley forms, the habit tends to be slender, with a somewhat 

 tardy maturing of the seeds. In the coastal forms, the habit is 

 pronouncedly stockier, with an early maturity. About the region 

 of San Francisco Bay the two forms strongly intergrade. The 

 type, from Benicia, in the Gray Herbarium, is a depauperate plant. 

 Evidently the remaining Bigelow specimens, if any, were destroyed 

 in drawing the diagnosis in 1857. Additional plants, collected by 

 Dr. E. L. Greene in 1874, were used in the emended description 

 in the "Botany of California'' as there cited, and as labeled 

 ''Syn. Fl. N. Amer." in the Gray Herbarium. 



Pla7itago heterophylla Nuttall was described from Arkansas 

 material which was without flowers or fruit. The plants were in a 

 fine vegetativ^e condition, showing well the fibrous roots, the mass 

 of woolly hairs at the crown of the short caudex, long narrow 

 herbaceous somewhat fleshy leaves with prominent scattered teeth. 

 The spikes, flowers, and fruit were early described by Asa Gray 

 in 1856 in his Manual, second edition. The extremes of the spe- 

 cies are very unlike but they are connected by an innumerable 

 number of intermediate forms. There are those so similar to de- 

 pauperate forms of P. pusilla that they may be recognized only by 

 the number and form and surface of the seeds. Others are so tall 



and erect and 



p.p 



others so depressed-spreading and laciniate-toothed that they 

 scarcely seem to be the same species. But the fruits arid seeds 



run true. 



Between 1880 and 1890, there was collected a series of plants 



of this species which were apparently new to the known Cali- 

 fornia flora. They were from the environs o{ San Francisco Bay 

 southward, here and there, to Tia Juana, Lower California, just 

 over the international boundary. E. L. Greene described these 

 as P. calif oryiica, in 1885. The vegetative characters of the 

 Californian specimens vary as do (and parallel to) the southern 

 and eastern forms. There is one difference in the fruiting stage, 

 namely, the smaller number of seeds, often only five to eight, due 



