Remarks on Certain Pentstemons. 



Tlie genus Fentsiemon, separated from Chelone in 1748, by 

 ^liteliell, was not admitted by LiimiBUS, who referred tiie 

 species all to Chelone; and this view obtained with mo^t of 

 the Old World botanists until about sixty years since. The 

 sepals of Chelone are broad, obtuse and concave. In Pent- 

 stemon tliey are narrow, acute or acuminate and plane. On 

 this one difference in character the genera may be held dis- 

 tinct, and probably ought to be. The winged character of 

 the seeds, formerly supposed to hold as a second mark of 

 Chelone^ fails. That considerable group of species belonging 

 to the Pacific slope, of which Gerardia fndicosa, Pursh, is 

 the type, which group Asa Gray in the earlier volume of the 

 . Synoptical Flora reduced to one, as P. Menziesil, but after- 

 wards, in the Supplement, began to segregate, exhibits freely 

 here and there the more or less distinctly wing-angled seeds 

 of Chelone; but these are true Pentstemons by the calyx and 

 the habit. The same is true of another and somewhat differ- 

 ent plant of the AVest, which has by most authors hitherto 

 been treated as a Chelone^ namely, 



P. NEMORosus, Trautvetter, in Mem. Acad. Petrop. 18il, 

 250. Chelone nemorosa, Dough, in Lindl. Bot. Eeg. xiv. t. 

 1211 (1828). Even if the seed character ascribed to Chelone 

 had not been found to recur again and again in true Pent- 

 stemon, still this plant would be of this genus rather than 

 the other, on account of its sepals and its agreement in habit. 

 And, a true estimate of the seed character having been 

 reached, there can be no doubt that if Pentstemon is to be 

 retained, here is where the species belongs, as Dr. Traut- 

 vetter long ago maintained. 



As a first hint of how difficult a problem in western botany 

 is awaiting solution in resj^ect to that section of the genus of 



