STUDIES IN THE COMPOSITAE. 
2-edged and -awned, the awns with soft and slender retrose 
 aculec,the edges of the achene below them similarly retrorse- 
ciliate. : 
This is a strikingly handsome and rather large species, 
probably common in such marshes of Maryland and Vir- 
ginia as skirt the estuaries of the Potomac River. The type 
specimens were collected by Mr. Theo. Holm and myself back 
of Marshall Hall, Md., 28 Sept., 1898. We both remarked 
at the time that this was quite a new aspect of B. cernua, as 
exhibiting a dark-brown disk, this being due to the long- 
protruded anther-tubes, in allusion to which peculiarity, as 
accompanying cernuous heads, [ have assigned the specific 
name. The rays are about twice as large as in those more 
northerly plants that exhibit nodding heads. 
VB. GRACILENTA. Slender, simple, 1 to 2 feet high, rather 
closely corymbose at summit; the stems purplish, scabrous, 
terete, not striate: leaves narrowly lanceolate, 2 or 3 inches 
long, about equalling the internodes, lightly and rather re- 
motely serrate: bracts of outer involucre small and reflexed, 
not as long as those of the broad inner set, these and the 
chaff of the receptacle more than usually yellow and peta- 
loid: disk-corollas with long tube and short campanulate 
limb: achenes of very distinctly cuneiform outline, short, 
black and shining, compressed-trigonous and -tetragonous, 
none of the angles corky or cartilaginous, but the two prin- 
cipal ones when viewed from the side appearing obtusely 
somewhat repand-toothed, each hair or bristle of such mar- 
gin arising from a tubercular elevation; awns 3 or 4, very 
stout and rigid, not very unequal, the longest more than 
half as long as the achene. 
Near Minneapolis, Minnesota, 23 Sept., 1891, Sandberg, 
n. 985. A species very well marked in habit, as well as in 
