NEW OR NOTEWORTHI SPECIES. 75 



the description of that species. The fruit eharacteis of /). 

 crendfnm are excellent. The operculum though small (less 

 than a line wide), is neatly severed from the hody of the cap- 

 sule except upon one side where, hy one of the ten valves, it 

 hangs 'at length inverted, as if by a hinge, not falling away 

 until late. TJie large sub-alpine Dodecaihcon of the Cali- 

 forniau Sierras, whatever its specific name should be, has the 

 same mode of dehiscence, but is in several points very unlike 

 this its analogue of the high peaks of Oregon and Washington. 



■ 



D0DECA.THEON Hendehsoni, var. cbuciatum. D. cruciafinn,' 

 Oreeiie, Pitt. i. 213. This, altliougli of peculiar range, occu- 

 pying as it does the wliole of the territory sloping toward San 

 Francisco Bay to the exclusion of true D. Hendersom, is 

 better placed as a variety of that species. But the tetramery 

 of the flowers is constant ; and so is the slender mode of 



growth, as well ns the more elongated capsules, not to speak 



of the darker hue of the corolla. Both the variety and tlie 

 hpQ pi'opagate by minute bulblets formed upon the crown; 

 occasionally also by root-metamurpliosis. 



PoLExoNiUii OCCIDENT ALE. Stems two feet high, slender, 

 solitary, erect from a decuml>ent l)ase, arising from slender 

 horizontal rootstocks running but little below the surface of 

 the ground : herbage puberulent. the inflorescence somewhat 

 viscid : radical leaves only 2 or 3, remote, each arising from 

 a node of the elongated rootstock ; cauline few and remote ; 

 leaflets in 7 or 8 pairs, ovate-lanceolate, acute : flowers few, 

 nodding, in a strict thyrsoid raceme : corolla rotate-carapanu- 

 l^te, I iueh broad, the segments acute : filaments linear- 

 sil>ulate, naked, equalling the corolla ; anthers ronnd-oval, 

 retuse at each end. 



I thus name and define as a probable species the "P. 

 ^'^^ruleum" of the Eocky Mountains of Colorado, and of the 

 ^aiiforniun Sierras, not doubting that the rare plant of the 

 northern Atlaidic states catalogued everywhere as P. ca-ru- 

 ''^nm will be found identical with tliis, when its characters 



M-^jy 15, 1S90. 



