310 GLEASON: STUDIES ON WEST INDIAN VERNONIEAE 
VERNONIA GNAPHALIIFOLIA Rich. in Sagra, Hist. Fis. Pol. Nat. 
Cuba 11: 34. 1850 
Vernonia sublanata Gleason, Bull. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 4: 177. 1906. 
Dr. Urban has established the identity of these two species by 
the examination of authentic material, and they are accordingly 
united here. The species appears to be common and widely 
distributed in Cuba from the province of Havana eastward. 
SPECIES-GROUP DIVARICATAE 
The history of this group of Vernonieae begins with the 
publication of V. divaricata by Swartz in 1806. This was followed 
in 1831 by Lessing’s V. acuminata, and no further addition was 
made to the group until 1906, when Gleason described V. albicoma 
and V. expansa. During the last half-century V. divaricata and 
V. acuminata have been usually considered identical. The whole 
group, so far as known, is confined to Jamaica, and the ample 
collection in the Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden 
includes seven distinct species. 
At the present time the chief difficulty lies in determining to 
which of these seven species the old names divaricata and acuminata 
belong. Certain characters given by the authors in their original 
descriptions serve to exclude one or another of the species, and 
by this process of exclusion it is possible to arrive finally at a 
reasonable conclusion. It may be safely affirmed that the two 
species described below are the only ones examined to which 
these names can consistently be given, without doing violence to 
some important feature of the original description. 
VERNONIA DIVARICATA Sw. FI. Ind. Occ. 3: 1319. 1806 
A straggling shrub, 1-2 m. high; leaves spreading, thin, bright 
green, elliptical or elliptical-lanceolate, 4-7 cm. long, 1.5-2.5 cm. 
wide, acute or subacuminate, entire, narrowed to an acute base, 
minutely puberulent above, thinly pubescent and finely punctate 
with minute pellucid glands beneath, sessile or with petioles 1-5 
mm. long; inflorescence of numerous, lax, loosely flowered, di- 
varicate cymes, bearing each 5-15 secund heads, and frequently 
prolonged into a leafy shoot; bracteal leaves oblanceolate to 
narrowly oblong, barely exceeding the 11—13-flowered heads; in- 
volucre campanulate, about 4 mm. high; scales thinly strigose- 
