SOME PHACELIA SEGREGATES. 17 
SOME PHACELIA SEGREGATES 
Referring to page 161 of Gray’s Synoptical Flora, Volume ii, 
Part 1, it will be seen that the author places in the midst of a 
group of annual species of Phacelia the P. ramosissima of Douglas, 
which he admits, on the testimony of the present writer, to be 
a perennial, This plant had always been supposed to be, like 
P. tanacetifolia and P. ciliata between which was placed, as 
strictly annual as they. Branches of the plants in the herbaria 
had more than once been mistaken by hastily and superficial 
observers, for those of Z. tanacetifolia. But neither real P. 
ramosissima nor any of its segregates bear any other than a remote 
likeness to the annual species named, as one sees them growing. 
The fragments of them that get into collections seem to convey 
no notion of habital peculiarities of this which must be con- 
sidered a very well marked group of kindred species. Not only 
are they tufted perennials, but their stems are excessively elon- 
gated and are either strongly decumbent, or assurgent, or even 
trailing and half climbing over shrubs and bushes or rocks 
among which they grow. 
Soon after the announcement was made of the perennial 
character of P. ramosissima, the late Dr. C. C. Parry proposed 
the first segregate from Gray’s aggregate, under the very apt 
name of P., suffrutescens. This is a Californian seaboard species, 
and seems to be the only one of the group which exhibits a 
really half-shrubly stem, the lower part of which always survives 
the winter and is woody. 
The first of the new species proposed is represented in that 
North California plant, the perennial duration which I was first 
to note. 
P. DECUMBENS. Perennial, the slender stems two feet long or 
more, decumbent, or even, almost trailing, minutely pubescent 
