CALIFORNIAN UMBELLIFERZ. 269 
retrorsely hispid, pendulous upon an almost filiform pedicel 
an inch and a half long. 
With the preceding; flowering and fruiting in February. 
The calyx in this species is much like that of P. muriculata 
(Greene, Bull. Calif. Acad. i. 209), but that is a low perennial. 
CONCERNING SOME CALIFORNIAN UMBELLIFERZ. 
SANICULA. 
Everywhere described as a genus of perennials, the most 
common Californian species, S. Menziesii, might better be 
called annual than perennial It belongs to neither class. 
Although seedling plants may require two or three or five 
years to bring them to their flowering, no plant ever flowers 
more than onee. No mullein or other biennial is more surely 
dead, root and branch, when once it has matured its seeds, 
than is this annoyingly prevalent Californian umbellifer. It 
is propagated only by seed. No root is ever found to produce 
more than a single stem, and having produced that one, its 
life-career is run. Such plants are essentially annual. There 
is no fundamental difference between annuals and biennials ; 
nor any between biennials and the century plant, for example. 
They fructify but once, then die. Perennials survive year 
after year, sending up annually a new product of stem, leaves, 
flowers and fruit. Such are some of our western Saniculas ; 
but such are not others; and the generic description ought 
to be modified in favor of the species or group of species 
whose very different nature as to root-duration is here indi- 
cated. 
S. MARITIMA is written of as if it were some common sea- 
coast plant of the San Francisco region. In so far as known 
it can not well be called maritime at all; and it appears to be 
the rarest and most local plant of a region where the rare 
Issued March 25, 1889. 
