320 GLEASON: STUDIES ON WEsT INDIAN VERNONIEAE 
SPECIES-GROUP SAGRAEANAE 
This group is distinguished at once from other West Indian 
species by the large glabrous achenes. The leaves also are usually 
thick and firm or coriaceous, entire or with spinulose teeth. Most 
of the species have been in the past poorly represented in American 
herbaria, and some of them have been seldom collected since their 
original discovery. 
In the revision, Vernonia rigida Sw. and Vernonia fruticosa 
(L.) Sw. were regarded as identical and referred to this group, to 
which the name Rigidae was applied. Since that time, specimens 
of V. fruticosa have again been collected, and the species is seen 
to belong to a different group. The Jamaican V. rigida, also, is 
described with pubescent achenes, a character which removes it 
at once from this group. 
In 1836 De Candolle described V. Sagraeana from Cuba, the 
first known species of the group. This was followed in 1850 by 
V. Valenzuelana of Richard. In 1863 Schultz examined the recent 
Cuban collections of Wright, and added three species, leptoclada, 
inaequiserrata and Wrightii, and a fourth, Sprengeliana, based on a 
plant collected by Bertero in Santo Domingo. Grisebach added 
a variety, inaequiserrata angustifolia, also collected by Wright in 
Cuba. That left the group with seven species and one variety: 
and, so far as known to the writer, no authentic collection of any 
of these was made or at least recognized for forty years. Further 
difficulty was added by the confusion of numbers of some of 
Wright’s collections, so that at least two different species have 
masqueraded in herbaria under wrong names. One case of this 
confusion was recognized in 1906 by Gleason, who remedied it by 
the description of V. viminalis. 
Since 1906, the collectors of the New York Botanical Garden, 
in their diligent explorations of Cuba, have recollected four of these 
old, imperfectly known species, and have added three entirely 
new forms, which are here described. 
The group as a whole is one of the most easily recognized of 
all the West Indian species. It is characterized especially by a 
high involucre and by large, glabrous, obscurely ribbed achenes, 
with a prominent basal callus, and the large, firm or rigid leaves. 
