PARRY CEANOTHUS. I 63 



sents unusually well-defined and characteristic features. Thus whether 

 seen in the wide-spread, typical species, C. Americanus, the minute- 

 leaved C. microphyllus of the Southern Atlantic coast, the densely- 

 branched, spine-clad Ceanothi of Mexico, or the more luxuriant forms 

 of the Pacific coast, it presents the same assemblage of characters, in 

 habit of growth, foliage, inflorescence, and fruit, to some of which 

 points it may be well briefly to allude. 



As a shrub, it, of course, fits in well with allied Rhamnaccous gen- 

 era, in its densely-branched ramification; its tendency, especially in 

 arid districts, to defend itself from aggression by terminating its inter- 

 locking branches with rigid spines, of which the botanical explorer is 

 apt to carry away lasting mementoes. Its leaf venation is of such a 

 marked character as to afford the fossil botanist some of the most reli- 

 able data for connecting the present vegetation with that of remote 

 geological epochs. 



The inflorescence, composed of a thyrsoid aggregation of irregular, 

 fascicled umbels, is often prolonged in graceful plumes, either a pure or 

 dull white, or various shades of blue, (never, as sometimes stated, yellow). 

 The separate flowers, with their slender, colored pedicels, show inflexed 

 calyx lobes, from the clefts of which spread out the hooded petals, 

 which, at the proper season relax, to release the enclosed stamens, over- 

 topping the trifid style. The massed flowers, though strictly speaking, 

 hermaphrodite, are inclined to be polygamous, most of them, after the 

 period of fertilization becoming effete, though a favored few develop 

 fruit. Hybridity, which would seem to be largely favored by the pro- 

 fusion of showy and occasionally fragrant flowers, and which has been 

 supposed to be largely instrumental in confusing species, is not a very 

 troublesome feature in field observation, where alone it can be properly 

 studied. By far the majority of species having a distinct geographical 

 range and different periods of flowering, while even such as grow in 

 close proximity and flower at the same time, each maintain their proper 

 specific characters; while true hybrids, however puzzling in the her- 

 barium, are, in their proper field of growth, readily traced to their 

 ancestral sources. 



The fruit, which so strongly simulates in external appearance some of 

 the Euplwrbiaceous genera as to have suggested a near relationship — 

 though not carried out in other points — varies considerably in its size, 

 its smooth or resinously-coated exocarp and its accessory appendages, 

 but has otherwise very uniform characters of seed and pericarp. A 

 fact not often noticed, but which is probably more or less true of all 

 species, is that the rigid Cocci, when released from their attachment to 



