OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMPOSITZ. 3 
Tribe I: VERNONIACER. 
More closely allied to the Asteroidew than to any other 
group, and resembling them considerably in general appear- 
ance, and characters of involucre; they differ in being desti- 
tute of ligulate or ray corollas, in having sagittate anthers, 
subulate style-branches, and flowers never yellow, but vary- 
ing from white to red and purple or blue, throughout the forty 
genera. In general appearance many of the species are 
analogous to Eupatoriaces, while certain others so simulate 
the genus Serratula, of the Cynarocephale as to have been 
actually so referred when they were new and had been sub- 
jected to no more than a superficial examination. The most 
conspicuous and common Vernoniaceous plant of the United 
States was named Serratula Noveboracensis by Dillenius, 
and accepted as a good member of that genus by the “immor- 
tal Linnews” himself. : 
But the excellent floral distinctions by which all these are 
kept far apart from Serratuia and other thistle-like plants, 
are now well known to every student of the Composite. 
No other suborder is so feebly represented in North America 
as this of the Vernoniacew; and we have but three genera; 
one of them monotypical, namely Sfokesia. This also was 
first published as a veritable thistlewort, under the name of 
Carthamus levis (Hill. Hort. Kew. 57. t. 5 (1769); but was 
proposed as the type of a genus by L’Heritier some eighteen 
years later, who gave it a new specific name. It should be 
called Srokesta Lavis (Hill), rather than S. Cyanea, L’ Her. 
The principal genus of the suborder, Vernonia, is one of 
those which fell under the bibliographical inspection of Dr. 
Kuntze, with the result that place is given by him, in his 
Revisio Generum, to the name Cacalia instead. This was 
given by Burmann, in 1737, and, had it not been an old name, 
long applied to a different genus, it would have become the 
valid name of this one. The same thing, substantially, is 
true of Hill’s synonym, Behen, which also antedates Vernonia — 
by more than twenty years; so that VERNONIA being the first 
