NOTES ON VIOLETS. 255 
was surprised to see that these are borne, not singly as in 
the ease of the early aerial ones, but in what must probably 
becalled a true raceme. There are from two to four of these 
flowers upon a common peduncle; and two or more such 
peduneles are produced by each plant. 
Viota oxvoEnas. Viola canina var. oxyceras, Wats. Bot. 
Calif. i. 56. Small-leaved, long-peduncled, the peduncles far 
surpassing the leafy part of the plant; peduncles and calyx 
wholly glabrous, but petioles (under a lens) notably retrorse- 
hirtellous: flowers very large, light-blue or pale violet, the 
lower part of each petal. darker blue and notably striate- 
veiny: spur greatly elongated, gradually tapering and acute. 
A very distinct species of the Californian Sierra Nevada; 
its characters hitherto but imperfectly indicated. V. adunca, 
confined to the seaboard, has a different pubescence, and 
rich red-purple corollas of another pattern, and a shorter 
thick spur. 
VIOLA EMARGINATA (Nutt.), Le Conte. This is the plant 
which, at page 140 preceding, I have discussed under the 
name of V. dentata, Pursh. At the time of that writing I 
Was trusting to the accuracy of Le Conte, who made out his 
. emarginata and Pursh’s V. dentata to be the same thing. 
But lam now wholly confident that in this he was wrong. 
Both Nuttall and Schweinitz had defined what they called 
the variety emarginata of V. sagittata as a plant with broad 
triangular foliage, while Pursh himself, and after him 
Schweinitz, had known V. dentata as a plant with oblong 
foliage. This most obvious difference is only one of several 
characters by which V. dentata and V. emarginata are per- 
fectly distinet and readily distinguishable. True V. emar- 
ginata differs from V. sagittata not only in the broad deltoid 
outline of its foliage, but also in a pronounced succulency. 
Specimens of V. sagittata under good treatment dry perfectly, 
$0 as to admit of removal from the press after three or four 
days, while those of V. emarginata, under the same treat- 
: 34 
