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BICKNELL: STUDIES IN SISYRINCHIUM 
‘ Sisyrinchium funereum sp. nov. 
Stiff and erect in scant tufts becoming 50-60 cm. high, pale 
glaucous-green, not discoloring when dry, the dead leaves and 
stems of the previous season, bleached to a light straw-color, per- 
sisting rigidly amid the fresh growth ; roots soft and stout, mostly 
2-3 mm. thick towards the base when dried and becoming over 
o cm. long. Leaves somewhat shorter than the stems, very 
smooth throughout, strongly close-nerved, 2-3.5 mm. wide, nar- 
rowly tapering to an acute, hard-pointed apex, their bases broad- 
ened and equitant; stems 2—4.5 mm. wide, stiff and straight, nar- 
rowly firm-margined and very smooth; node only one, high up, 
bearing a stiff, erect bracteal leaf 4-10 ‘cm. long, subtending 2-3 
longer approximate peduncles; peduncles slender, erect, straight 
or ‘slightly curved, unequal, 4-12 cm. long; spathes erect or 
slightly bent, 18-23 mm. long, 2-3 mm. wide; bracts closely 
approximate, firmly close-nerved, the inner one usualiy slightly 
Surpassing the outer, its tip white-scarious, obtuse, or even truncate 
or emarginate and apiculate, sometimes erose-denticulate ; outer 
bract hyaline-margined nearly to the short-pointed apex, broadly 
so below, united- “clasping for 5-7 mm.; inner scales crowded, 
silvery white, about equaling the bracts in length ; flowers 
numerous, finally 12-18, on slightly exserted puberulent pedicels ; 
perianth-segments violet-blue, 12-14 mm. long, contracted to a 
mucronate apex ; stamineal column about 5.5 mm. high; ovary 
densely glandular-puberulent ; pedicels fascicled, stiff and erect, 
or somewhat diverging above, the weaker ones sometimes spirally 
flexuous ; capsules light-colored, thick-walled, 3-6 mm. high, 
oblong- ovoid to broadly ovoid, often truncately contracted above 
and below, more or less distinctly moulded over the seeds ; seeds 
rather few, 2-4 in a row on slender stipels from central placentae, 
mostly globose and 1.5 mm. in diameter, black, rugulose, reticu- 
late, not umbilicate. 
Furnace creek cafion, Funeral Mountains, January 27, 1891, 
frederick V. Coville & Frederick Funston, Death Valley Expedi- 
tion of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 70. 225. 
A striking species, tall and stiff and very pale in color, with 
appressed peduncles, rather large flowers and greatly developed 
root-system. The persistence from one flowering season to another 
of the dried and rigidly erect leaves and stems is a noteworthy 
characteristic of the plant. It would appear from the single col- 
lection of the species so far made that the seeds of one season were 
carried over to the succeeding one to be released when the plant 
came again into flower. 
