TOWNSENDIA SERICEA. SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER. I9I 



dried natural specimens. We were at first disposed to regard 

 this development of the pappus in the ray flowers abnormal in 

 this respect, — but it may be noted that in Mr. Watson's Botany 

 of King's Expedition, a species T. scapigei'-a is figured, in which 

 also there seems nothing but a little difference in length to dis- 

 tinguish the pappus of the disk from that of the ray. 



Our plant would probably be regarded as the same with that 

 described in the " Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club," vol. 6, 

 p. 163, as T. Wilcoxiana, by Prof. Wood, who says of it, " pappus 

 alike in the ray and the disc florets, consisting of about thirty 

 white bristles," and he remarks that it is confounded in Herba- 

 riums with T. scricca. Since the discovery of the species we 

 now describe by the Franklin expedition, so many new forms 

 have been found from the Arctics to New Mexico, and so nearly 

 like each other, that botanists are almost afraid to name and 

 describe them as new species, and, therefore, we have thought it 

 might help the student, by dwelling on this point relative to the 

 pappus, to prepare him to look for probable variations. 



Among the interesting points connected with our plant is one 

 quoted by Hooker in regard to the time when the buds are 

 formed. In most composite plants these are developed after the 

 o-rowth of the leaves in the spring; Sir W. J. Hooker says "the 

 bud is formed in the autumn," and what Dr. Richardson further 

 observed in the living plant I find to be characteristic of all the 

 specimens in this collection, that " the florets of the ray are mosdy 

 involute, rarely expanded, and always narrow, nearly of the same 

 color with the pappus and inconspicuous ; the flowers indeed 

 never fully expanding," in which again the student will sec some 

 dlff*erences in our plate. 



Though with apparendy so wide a distribution through die 

 centre of our territory, It does not seem to be often met with by 

 collectors. It was found by Nuttall, in 1834, when on the Wyeth 

 expedidon, he says "on the Black Hills towards the source of the 

 Platte in ladtude 41°. Flowering in April and May probably, as, 

 accordinor to Dr. Richardson, the flower is formed In the autumn 



