OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMPOSITE. 71 



plants. But tliey have an involucre of quite another char- 

 acter, as well as a different pappus and different achenes. 

 Their rays also are few and short, and the foliage is entire. 



Asa Gray, in doing the Composite for the Torrey & Gray 

 Flora, found Slenohts an acceptable genus, and also added 

 to it a number of other more or less analogous types, some 

 of which, as he afterwards discovered, were wholly foreign 

 to it: Erigeron ? florifer, Hook., for one example; and this 

 was found to be a genuine Townsendia. And the Sienotus 

 pygmceus, published as new in the volume referred to, is of 

 no near affinity to true Stenoiiis, although the author placed 

 it in between those typical species, S, acaulis and armeriO' 

 ides. It is an herbaceous perennial, not a coriaceous-leaved 

 undershrub, and has not the involucre nor the achene of 

 true Stenotus. It is more naturally congeneric with Chry- 

 sopsis or Macronema, but may also be viewed as a 

 somewhat near relative of Solidago Parryi. 



In joining to Stenohis the Aplopappus linear if olius of 

 DeCandolle some violence was done to Nuttall's conception 

 of the genus; for, while the achenes are densely white- 

 villous, and the pappus also is of a clear and permanent 

 white, the type is a shrub of bushy and compact habit, and 

 the leaves are only subcoriaceous, besides being punctate 

 and resinous-viscid. These considei'ations, and also the fine 

 soft texture of the pappus, suggested to Dr. Gray a relation 

 to Ericameria. But the densely villous achenes, no less 

 than the very different involucral bracts, would render them 

 more anomalous in Ericameria than they are in Stenoius, in 

 which last I place them, preferring this course rather than 

 the alternative of treating them as a distinct generic type; 

 but after all, they do render Stenotus unsatisfactoril}^ 

 diversified- 



1. a ACAULIS, Nutt. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. vii, 334 (1840). 

 Chry sopsis aoaulis, Nutt. Journ. Philad. Acad, vii, 33 (1834). 

 Aplopappus acaulis, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad, vii, 353 (1868). 



On bleak open stony hills and mountain summits, from 

 Wyoming to eastern California. 



