490 , BORAGINACEZ MERTENSIA 
Var. bracteosa Gray Syn’ FI. ii, 198. Smallér-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: filainents 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. . Roughish-pubescent: stem erect, 
1-3 feet high, branched above: leaves‘thin, pinnately veined, tne 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 
