64 PITTONIA. 
brown, obliquely pyriform, compressed, smooth, with a turgid 
margin around two of the sides and no trace of wing. 
Common on elevated clayey spots around the salt marshes 
of Alameda, California ; collected by the writer in May, 1887. 
A species extremely well marked by its superabundance of 
minute apetalous diandrous flowers and its long-exserted cap- 
sules, as well as by the diffuse and compact habit, some of the 
plants measuring a foot and a half in diameter and formed 
into a close mat. The branches are, however, extremely slen- 
der, and the herbage although appearing quite glabrous and 
free from viscidity exhibits, under a good magnifier, some 
very slender and spreading gland-tipped hairs upon the 
flowering branchlets. 
CALYPTRIDIUM NUDUM. Root annual, fleshy-fibrous : leaves 
in a rosulate tuft, an inch or two long, consisting of an obovate 
obtuse or retuse mucronulate lamina narrowed into a petiole 
which is rather abruptly scarious-dilated at base : scapes 3—6 
inches high, solitary or several from each root, naked, termi- 
nated by a compact orbicular capitate-crowded cluster of short 
spikes: petals narrowly spatulate: stamens conspicuously 
exserted : anthers linear. 
Obtained on the summits of the Sierra Nevada, California, 
above Donner Lake, July, 1885, by my valued friend and 
correspondent, Mr. C. F. Sonne, of Truckee, whose unwilling- 
ness to let it pass for a form of the common S. wmbellatum 
has led to this indication of its truly sufficient specific charac- 
ter. The specimens are in flower only ; but the slender naked 
scapes and small capitate flower-clusters mark it well, not to 
speak again of the peculiarly narrow petals. 
LurrNUs Franciscanus. Stems woody at base, producing 
numerous slender decumbent branches about a foot long : 
branches and lower surface of leaves silky-pubescent : petioles 
almost filiform ; leaflets 7—9, oblanceolate, acute, 1—3 inch 
