204 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 



§ Cerastes. 



Leaves usually opposite, ■pinnately-veined , coriaceous, 

 persistent, never glandular ; subulate stipules deciduous 

 from the persistent corky base. Fruit never resinous, 

 hardly sulcate between the cocci, usually with conspicuous 

 hornlike protuberances above the middle. Species all 

 very closely related, perhaps best treated as varieties of a 

 single species. 



19. Ceanothus cuNEATus (Hook). C. cuneatus \2iX . 



ramulosus.* 



Rhamnus? cuneatus; ramis subferrugineo-piibesceutibus, foliis oppositis 

 in axillis fasciculatis coriaceis brevissime petiolatis cuneatis obtusis, retu- 

 sisve supra glabris subtus pubescentibus albidis reticulatis. — " Rhamnus." 

 Douglas MSS. — Hab. North-West America. Abundant near the sources of 

 the Multnomak Eiver, in sandy soils, growing under the shade of Pinus 

 Lamhertiana. Douglas. — I have retained this in the genus Rhamnus, it 

 being so named by Mr. Douglas in the Herbarium of the Horticultural 

 Society: but when its flowers and fruit shall be known, it will pi-obably 

 jjrove to be something very different, even from the Order Rhamnea;. It 

 constitutes a harsh shrub, from four to twelve feet high, with numerous, 

 stout, rigid, terete, opposite, subpatent, and subspiniform branches, very 

 leafy, and clothed with a rusty-coloured down. Leaves the largest of them 

 scarcely an inch long, and those oblong, cuneate at the base, while those 

 on the j'ounger parts of the branches are more decidedly ciineate, and 

 smaller, all of them opposite, bearing clusters of young leaves and 

 branches in the axils, coriaceous, the margins slightly revolute, entire, the 

 apex obtuse, refuse, emarginate, and sometimes tridentate, glabrous, and 

 very obscurely obliquely nerved on the upper surface; beneath downy 

 with the nerves oblique, close, prominent, brown, and reticulated with 

 transverse veins, the areolce of these veins, when seen under a microscope, 

 are filled with a beautiful, short, dense fascicle of hairs, which hairs orig- 

 inate in a circle, and all converge towards the centre of the little tuft, lying 



*C. CUNEATUS var. ramulosus. Smaller, the branchlets more numerous 

 and more leafy: leaves narrower and longer, more tomentose beneath: fl. 

 half as large, scentless, deep blue: fr. smaller and more elongated. — The 

 type abundant at middle elevations throughout oiir whole district, extend- 

 ing northward to the Columbia: the variety in the Coast Eange only, and 

 from Santa Cruz Mts., Greene, to Marin and Napa counties, il/rs. Curran. 

 Dr. Parry. Feb.-April.— E. L. Greene in Fl. Fr., 86. 



