60 FRANKENIACE^E. Krameria. 



or somewhat woody perennial herbs, silky-tomentose and often prostrate ; with 

 alternate and entire narrow leaves ; flowers solitary, on axillary bracted peduncles, 

 purplish. 



A genus of about a dozen species, confined to the warmer portions of America, three or four 

 indigenous on the southern border of the United States. 



1. K. parvifolia, Benth. A rigid diffusely branched shrub, 1 or 2 feet high, 

 with silky appressed pubescence, the slender divaricate branchlets often spinose : 

 leaves linear, 4 to 8 lines long ; the lower obtuse (often small and ovate to oblong), 

 the upper aculeately tipped and, with the inflorescence, usually sprinkled with short 

 rigid gland-bearing hairs : flowers 2 to 4 lines long ; peduncles with 2 or 3 pairs of 

 leaf-like bracts : the ovate silky sepals purple within : petals with claws united 

 nearly to the top, the middle blade narrow : stamens nearly free : fruit with numer- 

 ous very slender prickles retrorsely barbed their whole length, cordate-globose, 4 

 lines long, shortly acuminate, obscurely ridged on each side. Bot. Sulph. 6, t. 2 ; 

 Gray, PI. Wright, i. 41 ; Berg, Bot. Zeit. xiv. 766. 



From San Diego (Cleveland) to Fort Mohave (Cooper} and Sonora (Thurber), and eastward to 

 New Mexico ; southward on the coast to Magdalena Bay. 



2. K. canescens, Gray. Very similar in habit and foliage : pubescence short 

 and tomentose : leaves lanceolate to linear : peduncles shorter, 2-bracted : sepals 

 lanceolate, the smaller one linear : capsule ovate-globose, tipped with the stout 

 curved style, and armed with slender prickles barbed at the apex. PI. Wright, i. 

 42 ; Torr. Bot. Mex. Bound. 49, t. 13. 



" Desert west of the Colorado " (Ant.isell), and New Mexico. 



K. LANCEOLATA, Torr., is a more eastern species, from Tucson, Arizona (Palmer), to Florida. 

 It is silky-villous, with 2-bracted peduncles, the fruit armed with stout and straight retrorsely 

 scabrous spines. 



ORDER XIII. FRANKENIACE^. 



Low perennial herbs or undershrubs, with opposite entire leaves and no stipules ; 

 distinguished from the first tribe of the following order mainly by the parietal pla- 

 centae, and oval or oblong anatropous seeds with a straight embryo ; of a single 

 genus. 



1. FRANKENIA, Linn. 



Calyx tubular or prismatic, furrowed ; the 4 or 5 lobes valvate and induplicate 

 in the bud. Petals 4 or 5, hypogynous ; the blade tapering into a claw, which 

 bears an appendage (crown) on its inner face. Stamens 4 to 7 or rarely more, hypo- 

 gynous. Ovary 1-celled, with 2 to 4 few- to several-ovuled parietal placentae : style 

 2 - 4-cleft into filiform divisions : stigmas unilateral. Capsule included in the per- 

 sistent calyx, 2 - 4-valved ; the few or several seeds attached by filiform stalks to 

 the margin of the valves. Leaves small, mostly crowded and also fascicled in the 

 axils, sessile or nearly so, the pair often united by a membranous somewhat sheath- 

 ing base : flowers small, perfect, solitary and sessile in the forks of the stem, or by 

 the reduction of the upper leaves to bracts becoming cymose-clustered on the 

 branches : corolla pink or purplish. 



A widely diffused genus, of 30 or more species, only three of them North American, and these 

 all southwestern. 



1. F. grandifolia, Cham. & Schlecht. Smooth or somewhat pubescent with 

 short spreading hairs, rather woody at base, erect or prostrate, 6 inches high, leafy : 



