190 TOWNSENDIA SERICEA. SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER. 



" Flora Boreall-Americana," wherein he described and named it 

 as Toivnsendia. Its general appearance leads one to suspect 

 some difference from Aster; and the globular involucre (Fig. 2) 

 strikes us at once when we go into details, as in Aster it is ovoid 

 or oblong. Some authors note a difference in the relative length 

 of the pappus in the ray and disk florets, it being shorter in the 

 latter. Dr. Masters, in the "Treasury of Botany," says of Town- 

 sendia, " the fruits are hairy, and the pappus is in one row, scaly 

 in the outer, hairy in the inner fruits." The difference in the 

 pappus seems to be the great point of comparison. Sir W. J. 

 Hooker says, in the work referred to : " This highly interesting 

 plant, no less on account of its habit than its pappus, deserves 

 to be separated from Aster, of which it was by Richardson con- 

 sidered a doubtful species." When speaking of the pappus par- 

 ticularly he says: " Pappus of the ray composed of several unequal 

 subulate bristles much shorter than the achenium, and one or 

 two long ones nearly resembling those of the disk flowers." In 

 regard to this matter of the pappus Nuttall says, in the "Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society's Transactions" for 1834-35, "Achenium 

 obovate, margined, and flatly depressed, sericeous (silky) with a 

 numerous connate series of white silky pappus almost plumose, 

 barbellate, and remarkably attenuated above." 



We have thought it important to call the collector's attention 

 to what these different authors say of the pappus (the silky hair 

 coming up from the tip of the seed at / in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4), 

 because it will be seen that though there is something evidently 

 distinct in its characters from Aster, no two of the writers exactly 

 agree, and our Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 would scarcely be recognized 

 as coming under the description of any one. The bristles "much 

 shorter than the achenium " do not show at all ; rather, instead 

 of "one or two" being long in the ray flower (Fig. 3), they are 

 all " resembling those of the disk " (Fig. 4) ; being but little 

 shorter. Our drawing was made from a Colorado specimen, 

 kindly furnished by Prof Sargent, of the Cambridge Botanical 

 Garden, but the same character as figured in our plate exists in 



