‘ | Muhlenbergia, Volume. 3 
NEW WESTERN PLANTS . 
By, A. A, HELLER 
Vv Cakile Californica , 
. A.stout glabrous succulent much branched annual, 4 to 
eon high, the spread of the branches often exceeding the 
height: ive: thick and fleshy, oblong-ovate, the largest 8 cm. 
long, 3cm. wide, the apex blunt and rounded, the base tapering 
into the broad petiole, the margins sinuately toothed: sepals 
oblong, a little over 3mm. long, over 1 mm. wide, slightly nar- 
rowed above but not acute, thick, yellowish, convex on the out- 
side: petals pale purple, 6mm. long including the claw, blade 
about 4mm. long, 2imm. wide, the claw 2mm. long, shorter 
than the sepals, barely 1 mm. wide: filaments stout-filiform, the 
short ones 3mm. long, the long ones 41mm.; anthers bright ye- 
low, about 1mm. Jong, oblong, curved: style 4mm. long, thick, 
I mim. in diameter, with the stigmatic apex very slightly dives 
lobed: pods about 15 mm. long, without lateral projections at 
the nodes, the lower joint obovoid, about 5mm. long, 5mm. 
across the top, neither angled nor ribbed; upper joint broadly 
ovoid, 1 em. long, 3 mm. across, faintly two-ribbed below, strongly 
so at the flattened retuse apex. 
‘he type, 1m my herbarium, is my no. 6856, collected on 
the beach at Monterey, California, near the railway station, Juze 
.29, 1903, the description made from living material. But the 
shrunken pods in the dried specimen present a very different ap- 
pearance. In these the lower joint is usually, but not always, 
4-ribbed, the upper strongly 4-angled from base to apex, the 
apex pointed as well as flattened. In the dried state the pod 
more nearly agrees with the descriptions of C edentula, under 
which name our plant has been known. In his Flora Dr. Small 
describes C. edentula as having the upper joint 4-angled only 
near the base, and says the claw of the petal is longer than the 
blade, whereas in our plant the claw is only half the length of 
the blade. 
