74 PITTONIA. 
Caltha leptosepala; and I suggest the following tentative 
classification of the species: 
* Caulescent ; or the peduncle solitary, terminal (apparently), 
leaf-bearing, usually 2-flowered. 
C. BIFLORA, DC. Syst. i. 310? Leaves numerous, long- 
petioled, erect, appendaged at base by very conspicuous 
broad obtuse dark-brown sheathing stipules, the blade 
round-reniform, the broad rounded basal lobes overlapping 
and closing the sinus, the margin evenly erenulate, in width 
14 to 3 inches, the length considerably less: cauline leaf 
like the others but smaller and short petiolate, inserted below 
the middle, with a broad clasping stipule, and forming a very 
obvious node, the two peduncles very unequal: sepals oblong 
or obovate-oblong, obtuse: filaments filiform, four times the 
length of the linear anthers. 
This diagnosis is made, independently of the original 
Candollean description of C. biflora, from specimens col- 
lected on moist mountain slopes at Bailey Bay, Alaska, 14 
June, 1894, by Mr. M. W. Gorman, of Portland, Oregon. 
The specimens are beautiful ones, and two sheets of them 
are known to me, one being in the herbarium of the Cath- 
olic University, the other in the National Museum. It 
is probably the real C. biflora, DC., though certainty can 
scarcely be hoped for until the originals, supposed to have 
been preserved in the Banksian herbarium, have been ex- 
amined. At one point our specimens fail to answer the re- 
quirements of De Candolle’s diagnosis; the leaves in our 
plant are not * reniform, cordate at base, with a very broad 
sinus.” They are more near to the orbicular than to the 
reniform, and the sinuses are closed. I accept, though with 
much reluctance, the explanation of the late Dr. Huth, that 
as in the dried specimens the basal lobes are often folded 
upwards over the body of the leaf and pressed closely down 
* so as to be half invisible, so De Candolle was misled as to 
the existence of a broad open sinus where, in the fresh plant, 
