490 BORAGINACE.E MERTENSIA 



Var. bracteosa Gray Syn- PI. ii, 198. Smaller-flowered and more 

 decumbent, with most of the flowers subtended by a foliaceous bract. Near 

 the Coast, Puget Sound to California. 



14 MERTENSIA Roth Catal. Bot. i, 34: 1797. 



Perennial herbs with alternate leaves and rather large blue 

 purple or white flowers in panicles, cymes, or racemes. Calyx 

 4-parted, herbaceous, the lobes lanceolate or linear, little enlarged 

 in fruit. Corolla tubular funnelform, crested or unappendaged in 

 the throat, its lobes imbricated in the bud. Stamens inserted on 

 the tube of the corolla, included or scarcely exserted. Filaments 

 flattened or filiform. Anthers oblong or linear, obtuse. Style 

 filiform with entire stigma. Nutlets erect, coriaceous, wrinkled 

 when mature, attached by a small or short scar just above their 

 bases to a flat strongly convex gynobase. 



M. oblongifolia Don Syst. iv, 320. Stem slender, 4-8 inches high, 

 usually solitary from the short and thick corm-like root: leaves oblong to 

 spatulate-lanceolate, obtuse, 6-20 lines long, the lowest ones small, the largest 

 ones in the middle, smooth or the upper face scabrous with minute stiff 

 hairs: flowers rather numerous, in a somewhat close terminal cluster: lobes 

 of the calyx lanceolate little more than a line long, minutely ciliate: corolla 

 funnelform, with a broad purple tube, 6 lines or more long, and ample blue 

 limb, the throat rather abruptly dilated and open with pubescent crests at its 

 base on a line with the stamens: filaments as broad and not longer than the 

 anthers: style long and capillary, not exserted: nutlets dull and with obtuse 

 angles. In moist places, Blue Mountains of Oregon to Nevada, Utah and the 

 borders of Brit. Columbia. 



M. longiflora Greene Pitt, iii, 261. Glabrous except the setulose-scab- 

 rous upper face of the leaves: lowest leaves elliptic-lanceolate, on long and 

 slender, petioles, the upper ones obovate oval or ovate, rounded or even cor- 

 date at base and closely sessile, all very obtuse, the largest 2 inches long by 

 an inch broad: floral bracts acutish: flowers in a rather dense strictly termin- 

 al and subcorymbose panicle: calyx rather large, cleft to near the base, the 

 lobes lanceolate: corolla about an inch long, with long slender tube and short 

 erect narrow-campanulate limb: the almost capillary style nearly equalling 

 the corolla. Eastern Washington. Perhaps only a form of M. oblongifolia. 



M. Sibirica Don Syst. iv, 320. Glabrous and smooth or nearly so; 

 pale and glaucescent : stems erect 1-3 feet high from a thick branching root, 

 very leafy: leaves oblong to lanceolete and acute, or the lowest ones some- 

 times obovate and obtuse, hirsute-ciliate, all petioled, 1-4 inches long: racemes 

 short, somewhat panicled; floral bracts like the leaves, 9-10 lines long: lobes 

 of the ealyx lanceolate, about 2 lines long, commonly ciliate: corolla blue, 

 funnelform, 8-10 lines long, the broad tube nearly twice as long as the calyx, 

 shorter than the ample limb, sparingly pubescent within: filaments as broad 

 and much shorter than the anthers: style slightly exserted. Along mountain 

 streams: California to the Arctic regions and the Rocky Mountains. 



M. paniculata Don Syst. iv, 318. Eoughish-pubescent: stem erect, 

 1-3 feet high, branched above: leaves thin, pinnately veined, the lower ones 

 ovate, rounded or cordate at base, 2-5 inches long, long-petioled, upper ones 

 ovate or ovate-lanceolate, acuminate at the apex, narrowed at the base into 

 mostly slender petioles: racemes several-flowered, in loose terminal panicles: 

 flowers purple-blue, 6-8 lines long, on filiform pedicels 4-10 lines long: calyx- 

 lobes lanceolate, acute, about 2 lines long: corolla funnelform, crested in 



