184 ERYTHEA. 



and it is nowhere common. While other members of the 

 genus on western plains or hills occur plentifully in their 

 localities, and even sometimes form masses, this one — and it 

 is the only species found on the low dry plains — is so scarce 

 that one may botanize for a whole day in the very center of 

 its distribution without seeing three plants of it ; yet it has a 

 meridian range of probably twelve or fifteen hundred miles. 

 I have an impression that I have seen it in southern Arizona 

 to the westward of the dividing ridge of the continent ; but 

 otherwise it belongs to the plains of New Mexico, Colorado, 

 Wyoming, etc. Geyer's n. 329, from the "Black Snake 

 Hill" — ^probably somewhere in Wyoming— though too tall a 

 plant, with foliage too much scattered, yet unmistakably of 

 this species, though not the best natural type of it, bears in 

 the herbarium of Hooker this legend : ''D, azuretim, var. E, 

 T. & G," The handwriting is not recognizable as that of either 

 Torrey or Gray ; but it may be assumed to be authentic for 

 connecting this plant with that paragraph of the old Flora ; 

 and the authors had their specimen from " Lake Winnipeg," 

 collected by Houghton. The species is easily recognizable, 

 even in the herbarium, by its marked habit, stout velvety 

 stem, white flowers, and above all, the peculiarly erect spur. 

 This organ, in all other species known to me, projects back- 

 ward more or less horizontally, crossing the rachis of the 

 raceme at some kind of an angle ; but here it is parallel with 

 the rachis, or else curves away from it in such wise that the 

 tip of the spur somewhat overarches the expanded part of the 

 flower. In most larkspurs white-flowered plants are mere 

 albinos- but in the case of this species the flowers have never 

 even a tinge of blue. 



Belpliininm tenuisectum. Root thick, subligneous and 

 perpendicular, the fibrous parts, if any, not shown: stem rigid, 

 stoutish, strongly angled and distinctly striate between the 

 angles, 2 or 3 feet high, the whole plant rather obscurely 

 puberulent: leaves mostly cauline and quite numerous, very 

 short-petioled, finely cut into very many narrowly linear seg- 

 ments : raceme a foot long ; flowers rather large, intense blue. 



