49 PITTONIA. 
Our natural aversion to the name purpurea for a yellow 
violet diminishes somewhat under consideration of the fact 
that it was the purple of the herbage of this plant which 
suggested the specific name. 
V. PINETORUM, Greene, Pitt. ii. 14 (1889). V. purpurea, 
var. pinetorum, Greene, Fl. Fr. 243 (1891), It will be seen 
by referring to the original diagnosis of this plant, that it 
was at first mistaken for a blue-flowered species. The first 
good flowers which I saw of it came in from Mr. Parish, 
who gets a form of it not far removed from the type, in Bear 
Valley, of the San Bernardino Mountains; and the corolla 
is certainly yellow, only fading purplish or bluish. On per- 
ceiving that it was truly yellow-flowered, I quite too hastily 
referred it, as a variety, to V. aurea, While perfectly distinct 
from that, it is,on the other hand, of that accrescent-leaved, 
short-stemmed group to which V. premorsa and Nuttallia 
belong. In mature specimens the long narrow foliage quite 
surpasses all the stem and peduncles. Yet no one would 
refer it to either of the species last named. Its denser pu- 
bescence, its prominently toothed long and narrow foliage, 
and its hoariness with fine pubescence, are three excellent 
characters by which to distinguish it from V. Nuttallii, not 
. to speak of the excessively long roots. 
Its range appears to be up and down the Sierra from back 
of San Bernardino northward to Yosemite and Donner Lake; - 
though at these northern stations it obtains a width of foli- — 
age, and a more caulescent habit which amount to an inter- 
grading with V-aurea; but the type, of the high and dry 
pine woods west of the Mohave Desert, can not but be taken 
as representing an undoubted species. 
