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. Lithospennum. 

 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, cpnnivent 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 * ^- amencana. 



Biennial; flowers medium; raceme dense 2. -U tioribunda. 



Perennial. 



