138 PITTONIA, 



r 



J 



complex species is of the upper Missouri and regions 

 adjacent, eastward of the Kocky Mountains- On the Pacific 

 slope it appears under a great variety of aspects; either 

 small, erect, very villous, growing on dry hills and perishing 

 'vvith most annuals early in the dry season of the year; or 

 nearly glabi'ous, diffuse, with branches several feet long, 

 along river banks in the hot interior of California wiiere it 

 lives and flowers from April until December; or again, at 

 higher altitudes, in the open pine woods of the Sierra, it 

 appears as a small, minute-flowered herb, as short lived as 

 the summer months in that particular region. The species 

 may be as numerous as Xattall thought them, or they may 

 be mere local variations of one. But the Atlantic coast plant 

 usually referred here, has lately been proposed as distinct, 

 and apparently on quite sufficient grounds. That is, 



2. L. Helleri, Britton, ined. This is a slender, erect and 

 wiry, vei7 glabrous plant, readily distinguished by its very 

 narrow and acute leaves. The pods are thinner and some- 

 what constricted between the seeds ; these smaller and rela- 

 tively shorter than in any forms of the so-called L. sericeits. 



* * Sfipules gland-like J leaflets 4 to 10, unequally dis- 



irihided on the opposite margins of a dilated rachis ; 



pods readily dehiscent — Genus Anisolotus, Bernh. 



+ 



■^Annuals; flowers solitary, sJwrt-pedicelled, not hracied; 



claics of petals approximate and keel pointed. 



3. L. Wbangelianus, Fisch. & Mey, Ind. Sem. Hort. 

 Tetrop. 16 (1835) ; Linnsea, Lit.-Ber. 110 (1837). Ilosackici 

 suhpimiata, Torr. ^ Gray, Fl. i. 82G and 692, not Lotus sub- 

 pimudus, Lag.— Common tbrougliout middle Calif ornia, from 

 the plains of the interior to the seaboard ; long regarded as 

 identical with the Chilian L. suhpinnaius, which is a smaller 

 plant with narrower leaflets, relatively longer calyx-teeth and 

 petals all narrower with shorter claws, the banner not erect, 

 obovate-oblong merely, while in ours it is broadly obcordate. 



