Chrysopsis. COMPOSITE. 309 



15. CHRYSOPSIS, Nutt. 



Head many-flowered, heterogamous, with numerous fertile rays, or in two species 

 homogamous, the rays being wanting. Involucre campanulate or hemispherical ; 

 the scales imbricated, narrow, acute, mostly with somewhat scarious margins, desti- 

 tute of herbaceous tips. Eeceptacle flat, foveolate, or alveolate-toothed. Appen- 

 dages of the style-branches linear or subulate and hispid. Akenes oblong-linear or 

 obovate -oblong, compressed, hairy, the margins and each face commonly 1 -nerved. 

 Pappus alike in disk and ray, double ; the interior of copious rather rusty scabrous 

 capillary bristles of unequal length, the longer about equalling the corolla ; the exte- 

 rior a set of very short chaffy bristles or narrow little scales (slender and incon- 

 spicuous in 2). Low herbs (the Californian species perennial), with stems rather 

 thickly beset with alternate sessile leaves, and terminated by solitary or corymbose 

 (middle-sized) heads of yellow flowers. Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 252. 



1. Heads with rays: exterior pappus evident and more or less chaffy : herbage hir- 

 sute or villous. CHRYSOPSIS proper. 



1. C. sessiliflora, Nutt. Hirsute, varying from hispid to soft-villous : stems a 

 foot or so in height, erect or ascending from tufted thick rootstocks : leaves oblong, 

 or the lower spatulate, mostly entire : disk-corollas beset externally near the summit 

 with some scattered very slender hairs : outer pappus squamellate. The following 

 apparently all of one variable species. Nuttall's original, from Santa Barbara, &c. : 

 not canescent, somewhat hispid and glandular : stem and branches leafy up to the 

 head, which is as it were involucrate by some leafy bracts : scales of the involucre 

 slightly hirsute, usually glandular : outer pappus hardly longer than the breadth of 

 the ovary. (Involucre half an inch long.) Nutt. in Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. vii. 317. 



Var. Bolanderi, Gray. Less glandular and more villous ; the obtuser leaves 

 densely so, sometimes canescently silky : involucre mostly leafy-bracted and more 

 pubescent : the conspicuous squamellate outer pappus longer. C. Bolanderi, Gray, 

 Proc. Am. Acad. vi. 543. Both this and the first pass into 



Var. echioid.es, Gray. Stem and branches more slender and less leafy, the 

 heads only half as large and not leafy-bracted : outer pappus as in the last or less 

 conspicuous. C. echioides, Benth. Bot. Sulph. 25, & PI. Hartw. 316. 



Santa Barbara and vicinity, Nuttall, Cooper ; only their scanty specimens of the original form 

 yet seen. The var. Bolanderi, San Francisco to Noyo on the coast, Bolander, Kellogg. Var. 

 echioides, Santa Cruz to San Diego, Hinds, Coulter, Newberry, Hartweg, Bolander, &c. C. Bo- 

 landcri does not belong to the Achyrcea section, which is well marked by its scanty inner and 

 truly chaffy outer pappus. The present species is in some forms hard to distinguish from 



C. VILLOSA, Nutt., an equally polymorphous species, extending from the eastern side of the 

 Mississippi to the coast of Oregon and to the State of Nevada ; therefore very probably inhabiting 

 the northern part of California. It is destitute of the scattered long hairs near the tip of the 

 disk-corolla, and the involucre is not glandular, but commonly minutely canescent. 



2. Heads rayless : exterior pappus setulose, inconspicuous or obscure. AMMODIA, 



Gray. (Ammodia, Nutt.) 



2. C. Oregana, Gray. Much branched, erect, a foot or two high, somewhat 

 hirsutely pubescent and rather viscid : leaves oblong or lanceolate, entire, with a 

 prominent midrib : heads paniculate : involucre almost glabrous, composed of 3 or 

 4 ranks of successively longer thin and acuminate scales, only their midrib green, 

 the innermost equalling the pappus : corollas slender : akenes narrow : exterior pap- 

 pus indistinct. Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. vi. 543. Ammodia Oregana, Nutt. 1. c. ; 

 Torr. Bot. Wilkes Exp. t. 9. 



In sand or gravel along streams, mouth of Eel River (Kellogg), Calistoga (E. L. Greene), and 

 north through Oregon. 



