BUTTERCUP FAMILY 



517 



tipper leaves; tips of sepals often pinkish; petals none, or 1 to 7 (or 9) and 

 white, oval to rhombic-spatulate, slender-clawed; stamens 11 to 35, 2 to 3 

 lines long; berries ellipsoid or subglobose, red or white, with polished surface, 

 3 to 5 lines long. 



Wooded or brushy hills, mostly north slopes : Coast Ranges from Monterey 

 Co. north to Siskiyou ; Sierra Nevada ; San Bernardino Mts. North to Alaska, 

 east to the Rocky Mts. 



Locs. Coast Eanges, 100 to 7000 feet: Little Sur Eiver, Santa Lueia Mts., Jepson 2582; 

 Berkeley, Jepson (pistils sometimes 2 and partly united) ; Glenbrook, Lake Co., Jepson; Salmon 

 Summit, Jepson 2078; Sisson, Jepson. Sierra Nevada, 4000 to 8200 feet: Modoc Co., M. S. 

 Baker; Bear Valley, Nevada Co., Jepson; Mariposa Big Trees, Jepson 4305; Golden Trout 

 Creek, Tulare Co., Jepson 4935. Southern California: Little Bear Valley, San Bernardino 

 Mts., Hall 1002. 



Kefs. ACTAEA SPICATA L. Sp. PI. 504 (1753), type European. Var. ARGUTA Torr. Pac. E. 

 Eep. 4: 63 (1857) ; Jepson, Fl. W. Mid. Cal. 203 (1901). A. arguta Nutt.; T. & G. Fl. 1: 35 

 (1838), type loc. woods of the Columbia Eiver, Nuttall. A. rubra var. arguta Lawson, Eev 

 Canad. Eanune. 84; Jepson, Fl. W. Mid. Cal. ed. 2, 167 (1911). 



6. AQUILEGIA L. COLUMBINE. 



Perennial herbs with ternately compound chiefly basal leaves, petiolulate leaf- 

 lets and showy solitary flowers. Sepals 5, plane, colored like the petals. Petals 

 5, all alike and produced backward into large hollow spurs projecting below 

 the calyx. Stamens numerous, some sterile inner ones with dilated filaments, ap- 

 pearing like scarious scales. Pistils 5, becoming several-seeded follicles. Spe- 

 cies about 50, northern hemisphere. (Derivation doubtful, said by some to be 

 from the Latin aquila, an eagle, on account of the claw-like spurs.) 

 Flowers pendulous. 



Blade of petals nearly obsolete. 



Throat of petal spurs truncate, about 2 lines in diameter 1. A. truncata. 



Throat of petal spurs cut backward, about 4 lines in diameter 2. A. tracyi. 



Blade of petals 3 to 5 lines long 3. A. formosa. 



Flowers erect or soon becoming so 4. A. pubescens. 



1. A. truncata F. & M. Stems several, erect, branching, iy 2 to 3y 2 f eet 

 high ; herbage glabrous ; leaves biternate, the leaflets % to 1% inches long, 

 broad or roundish in outline, 3-cleft or -divided, or incised, crenately toothed, 

 mostly broadly cuneate (sometimes rounded or truncate) at base; petioles long, 

 those of the basal leaves 1 foot long; flowers scarlet, tinged with yellow, pen- 

 dulous in anthesis, the spurs, therefore, erect, 8 to 9 lines long, truncate at the 

 orifice, the blade almost none ; sepals widely spreading, 9 to 11 lines long ; folli- 

 cles 8 to 10 lines long, conspicuously veined, the long styles persistent. 



Moist shaded places in the lower hills, or at middle altitudes in the moun- 

 tains, almost throughout California. May-July. 



Locs. Southern California: Mt. San Jacinto, Hall 2374; Bear Valley, San Bernardino 

 Mts., Parish 3692; San Antonio Mts., Abrams 2714. Sierra Nevada, 4500 to 10,000 feet: 

 Eock Creek, Mt. Whitney, Jepson 5061; Pine Eidge, Fresno Co., Hall $ Chandler 155; Porcu- 

 pine Flat, Yosemite Park, H. M. Evans; Table Lake, Tuolumne Co., Jepson 3392; Hetch-Hetchy, 

 Jepson; Bear Valley, Nevada Co., Jepson. Coast Eanges: San Luis Obispo, Palmer; Mill 

 Creek, Santa Lucia Mts., Jepson; Crystal Springs Lake, San Mateo Co., C. F. Baker 422; 

 Mt. Diablo, Brewer 1156; Green Valley Falls, Solano Co., Platt; Bound Valley, Mendocino Co., 

 Westerman; Humboldt Co., Tracy 2739 (Buck Mt.), 3222 (Little Eiver); Humbug Mt., Siski- 

 you Co., Butler 1576. 



Var. pauciflora Jepson n. comb. A more compact plant ; leaves mostly basal, 

 these and the nearly naked stems forming a dense heavy tuft ; stems 1 to 1% 

 feet high, few-flowered. High montane in the Sierra Nevada, observed in its 

 extreme form at Conness Creek and elsewhere in the Yosemite Park. 



Refs. AQUILEGIA TRUNCATA F. & M. Ind. Sem. Petrop. 9. Suppl. 8 (1844), type loc. Ft. 

 Boss; Merritt, Erythea, 4: 102 (1896) ; Jepson, Fl. W. Mid. Cal. 195 (1901). Var. PAUCIFLORA 

 Jepson. A. pauciflora Greene, Leaflets, 1: 76 (1904), type loe. Hockett Mdws., Tulare Co.; 

 spms. from this station (Hall 8463) have glabrous and not ' ' puberulent " filaments. 



