PHASES OF POTENTILLA. 107 
SoME West AMERICAN ASPERIFOLLE. 
III. 
Only three years sinee, the multitude of species diseussed 
in this and two former papers under the above heading, were 
comprised in the genus Eritrichium as set forth by Professor 
Gray in Volume L, Part II., of the Synoptical Flora of North 
America. But long before the year 1884, the present writer, 
from his vantage-ground of familiar knowledge of the plants 
as they grow, had perceived the accepted Hritrichium to be a 
complex genus, and had thought to divide it into three or, 
more by restoring, first of all, the old genera, Plagiobothrys 
and Krynitzkia, the names of which had been preserved as 
sub-generie under Eritrichium in the Synoptical Flora. In 
the summer of the year named, after much valuable material, 
of forms both old and new, representing the South as well as 
North American phases of the genera, had been amassed in 
the herbarium of the California Academy with a view to this 
new elaboration, the present writer disclosed his purpose to 
the celebrated author above named. The result was that Dr. 
Gray himself took the work in hand, and, at the end of the 
year, gave us his “Revision of some Borragineous Genera,” 
. in the pages of the American Academy Proceedings. The 
substance of this paper was shortly afterwards reprinted, 
forming the bulk of a supplement to the proper volume of 
the Flora. 
Eritrichium, of which we had, as I supposed and still 
think, two species, suffered a complete extinction at the hands 
of Professor Gray, and the whole nomenclature of this large 
ailiance was changed, saving only the names of the few 
originals of Plagiobothrys and Krynitzkia. In the course of 
the three years last past the number of species has been 
inereased considerably, mainly through diligent field research 
carried on by my colleagues and correspondents; and now, 1n 
the series of papers of which this is the third, all the names 
