DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



HARFORDIA, Greene & Parry. 



A New Genus of Eriogoneae, from Lower California. 



BY C. C. PARRY. 



Read before the Academy, "July qth, 188b. 



While the remarkable Eriogonous genus Pterostegia, Fisch. & Meyer, 

 has been long known among botanists in a very common California 

 species, P. drymarioides, F. & M., a second species from Lower Cali- 

 fornia, collected in one of the early voyages of discovery on the Pacific 

 coast, and described in "Botany of the Sulphur" as Pterostegia macro- 

 ptera, Benth., has been long a desideratum in scientific herbaria. ( )nly 

 as late as 1882 additional material was procured by Mr. L. Belding 

 from near the original locality, and fragmentary specimens of the same 

 were contributed to the Gray Herbarium, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

 The year following a single fruiting branch was presented to the writer 

 by Gen. William Le Due, who, attracted by the showy involucre, put 

 a fragment in his pocket-book while on a mining excursion down the 

 Lower California coast in the spring of 1883. In the spring of 1885, 

 Prof. E. L. Greene, of the California Academy of Science, in his inter- 

 esting botanical trip down the Pacific coast as far as Guadaloupe and 

 Cedros Islands, secured ample specimens of what, on subsequent exam- 

 ination, he regarded as two distinct species, which were described by him 

 in Bulletin of the California Academy, IV., pp. 212, 213, as Pterostegia 

 galioides and P. fruticosa — not being aware at the time that the former 

 was identical with P. macroptera, Benth., which, according to the pub- 

 lished descriptions, represented only a low herbaceous plant. Unfor- 

 tunately, owing to the lateness of the season, Mr. Greene's specimens 

 did not contain the characteristic flowers, his description of the floral 

 organs being derived only from the fallen fruit. Previously, however, 

 Mr. Greene, as Botanical Curator of the California Academy, had found 

 in Dr. Veatch's collection of 1859, from Cedros Island, a single frag- 

 ment of one of the above species, so characteristic, as he afterwards 

 noticed, of the peculiar vegetation of that island. Before, however, 

 reaching the conclusion, from the data then in his possession, of includ- 

 ing these remarkable plants in the genus Pterostegia — so different in 

 habit and general character from the typical species — Mr. Greene inti- 

 mated a probability that more complete material, including the floral 

 organs, might justify the establishment of a new genus, for which he 



