BORAGINACEAE (BORAGE FAMILY) 411 



Biennials or perennials. 



Nutlets prickly on the margin 5. Eritrichium. 



Nutlets not prickly on the margin. 



Flowers white or yellow ....... 8. Oreocarya. 



Flowers blue (rarely white) ...... 9. Mertensia. 



Nutlets attached by their bases. 



Nutlets small, smooth and membranous; flowers blue, in 



bractless racemes 10. Myosotis. 



Nutlets bony and polished; flowers yellow, in leafy or 



bracteate racemes; corolla-lobes rounded, spreading . . 11. Lithospermum. 

 Nutlets smooth, subglobose; flowers greenish or yellowish, 



in leafy-bracteate racemes; corolla-lobes acute, erect . 12. Onosmodium. 



1. COLDENIA L. 



Low herbaceous or suffrutescent plants, with canescent or hispid entire 

 leaves, and small, white, clustered, sessile flowers. Calyx 5-parted. Corolla 

 funnelform or salverform and convolute. Fruit separating at maturity into 

 four 1-seeded nutlets. 



1. Coldenia Nuttallii Hook. Kew Journ. Bot. 3: 296. 1851. Prostrate 

 annual, repeatedly and divergently dichotomous: leaves ovate or rhomboid- 

 rotund, 4-10 mm. long, on longer petioles, with 2 or 3 pairs of strong and 

 somewhat curving veins, and margins somewhat revolute: flowers densely 

 clustered in the forks and at the ends of the naked branches: filaments in- 

 serted nearly in the throat of the pink or whitish corolla, the tube of which 

 bears 5 short obtuse scales near the base: nutlets marked with a linear and 

 raphe-like ventral scar. Dry plains; from Wyoming to New Mexico and 

 westward. 



2. HELIOTROPIUM L. HELIOTROPE 



Annuals or perennials; ours herbaceous and with alternate, entire leaves, 

 white flowers, deeply 5-parted persistent calyx, salverform or funnelform 

 corolla, sinuses more or less plaited in bud, connivent anthers, and a 4-celled 

 ovary becoming a 2 or 4-lobed fruit splitting into 1-seeded nutlets. 



Glabrous and glaucous; fruit 4-lobed . . . . . 1. H. spathulatum. 



Strigose-canescent; fruit 2-lobed . . . . . . . 2. H. convolvulaceum. 



1. Heliotropium spathulatum Rydb. Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 30: 262. 1903. 

 Diffusely spreading perennial, 1-3 dm. high: leaves succulent, oblanceolate 

 or narrower: spikes unilateral, scorpioid, mostly in pairs or twice forked, 

 densely flowered: corolla 6-8 mm. broad, white, with a yellow eye: stigma 

 sessile, disk-shaped, as broad as the glabrous ovary: nutlets scarcely rugose. 

 H. curassavicum L. in part. In moist strongly saline soils; throughout our 

 range. 



2. Heliotropium convolvulaceum (Nutt.) Gray, Mem. Am. Acad. 6: 403. 

 1857. A low, spreading, freely branched annual, 1-3 dm. high: leaves ovate 

 to nearly linear, short-petioled : flowers solitary, opposite the leaves and ter- 

 minal, short-peduncled : calyx-segments acuminate: corolla large, strigose on 

 the tube, which exceeds the sepals and the angulate-lobed ample limb: an- 

 thers cohering slightly by their minutely bearded tips: style long and filiform; 

 stigma conical, with a truncate, penicillate tip. Sandy plains; Colorado and 

 westward. 



3. LAPPULA Moench. STICKSEED 



Hispid-pubescent or canescent herbs, with alternate entire leaves, and small 

 white or blue flowers in spikes or racemes. Calyx 5-cleft. Corolla salverform 

 or funnel-form, with short tube and the lobes imbricated in bud. Stamens 

 included. Ovary 4-lobed, becoming a bur-like fruit of 4 nutlets armed with 

 barbed prickles. Echinospermum Sw. 



Racemes ebracteate above; fruiting pedicels deflexed. 



Annual; flowers small; racemes open . . . . . .1. L. americana. 



Biennial; flowers medium; raceme dense . . . . 2. L. floribunda. 



Perennial. 



