142 PITTONIA, 
tute of eanescent pubeseence: leaves mostly simple, entire, 
ovate-oblong, petiolate, rugose and without conspicuous paral- 
lel veins; racemes geminate or ternate, short and spreading, 
slender but not loose: corolla small, greenish yellow: geni- 
talia exserted : fruiting calyx round ovate or nearly globose, 
i. e., the oblanceolate sepals spreading away from the capsule 
below, connivent over it above: seeds 2 only (the other 2 
ovules: always abortive), ovate, acutish, 3 line long, deeply 
pitted, dark brown. 
Common in the hills behind Oakland and Berkeley, Cal., 
also in the Sierra Nevada, inhabiting stream banks and north- 
ward slopes, always in shaded and moist places. Long known 
to me and to Californian botanists generally as thoroughly 
distinct from the other plant which, rightly or wrongly, goes 
by the name of P. circinata, but formerly withheld from pub- 
lication because means were not then at hand for determining 
whether it might not be the P. Californica of Chamisso. But 
that is the cespitose perennial, common on open hills and 
plains, with stout and simple stems ending in a thyrsus of 
crowded racemes; canescent with an appressed pubescence, 
especially along the obviously parallel leaf-veins beneath ; 
the leaves being also usually pinnately parted and not rugose ; 
the flowers purplish and much larger than in the present 
plant; calyx never globosely surrounding the capsules; seeds 
lanceolate and one only (!) in each capsule. I have no 
doubt this, too, is distinct from the original Patagonian P. 
circinata, and to be taken up under the name imposed by 
Chamisso. 
ALLOCARYA SCRIPTA. Stoutish and rather succulent, strigose- 
pubescent; branches prostrate, 6—10 inches long, loosely 
racemose, the short stout pedicels axillary to leafy bracts, de- 
flexed in fruit: sepals oblanceolate, accrescent and at length 
standing vertically in a row: nutlets a line long, deltoid-ovate, 
acute, strongly carinate ventrally down to the broad basal sear, 
the back dark and smooth, marked by sharp irregular flexuous 
white rugosities and ridge, these everywhere beset with tufts 
