158 PITTONIA. 
and important collection of Platystemon in existence. With- 
out that, any attempt to revise the genus would have been 
necessarily abortive. 
While finding it impossible to avoid the proposing of a 
great number of species, the attempt to arrange them in any 
thoroughly natural sequence has not resulted satisfactorily ; 
and the key is largely artificial; but I could do no better. 
PLATYSTEMON, Bentham. 
Annuals, mostly freely branched and decumbent or pro- 
cumbent, not rarely quite upright, with tufted but. erect 
leaves and scapiform peduncles. Herbage pilose or hirsute, 
in several densely and crinitely so, in a few almost or quite 
prickly. Leaves linear, either obtuse, or acutish and callous- 
tipped, always entire and opposite or in whorls of 3. 
Sepals 3 and petals 6, both occasionally more numerous. 
Color of flower creamy-white to yellow, and even particolored 
yellow and white. Stamens very many, unequal, mostly 
with broad petaloid filaments dilated upwards. Carpels 9 
to 20 or more, in maturity torulose or moniliform, breaking 
into 1-seeded joints, or in some continuous and quite sili- 
quiform, the whole circle often forming a hollow falsely 
capsular and seed-bearing cavity. Stigmas linear, hirtellous. 
turgid, not moniliform (nearly so in n. 2), merely torulose, 
and glaucous in nn. 7 and 9), the sides without definite marking. Petals 
and stamens deciduous, at least as to all but the latest flowers (except m 
n. 10), 
Outer filaments obcordate, scarcely longer than 
their linear sessile anthers... 
Outer filaments obcordate, longer than their often 
stipitate anthers ....00............ 10. P. purpuratus. 
Outer filaments merely obtuse ; anthers short...... . 3. P. villosus. 
Outer filaments long and narrow, emarginate or ob- 
tuse under the long linear anthers : 
Carpels elongated, many-jointed ; ; 
strongly torulose, glabrous, straight icc 2. P. leiocarpus. 
1. P. Californicus. 
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