222 COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 



a few chaffy bracts among the flowers : leaves from elongated-lanceolate to 

 oblong-spatulate, from entire to laciniate or rarely pinuatifid : scape from a 

 span to 2 feet high. Mountains of Colorado to the Sierra Nevada and Wash- 

 ington Territory, northeastward to Dakota and the Arctic regions. 



2. Akenes with a slender and mostly filiform nerveless beak and soft pap- 

 pus. MACRORHYNCHUS. 



3. T. aurantiacum, Hook. Loosely soft-pubescent and glabrate : leaves 

 from linear-lanceolate to spatulate, thinnish, entire, or sparingly laciniate-den- 

 tate, occasionally pinnatifid : scape from a span to a foot or more high : invo- 

 lucre 7 to 9 lines high ; its bracts from broadly to narrowly lanceolate and 

 acute, or outer and looser ones oblong and obtuse : flowers orange, commonly 

 changing to brownish red or purple : akenes thickish, 3 or 4 lines long, and 

 the firm beak only 2 or 3 lines long: pappus somewhat rigidulous. Macro- 

 rhynchus troximoides, Torr. & Gray. Northern Rocky Mountains to British 

 Columbia and Oregon, and mountains of Colorado. 



Var. purpureum, Gray. Leaves apparently thickish, laciniate, and with 

 the purple-tinged involucre very glabrous or glabrate : " flowers purple." 

 Proc. Am. Acad. xix. 72. New Mexico, and in the mountains of Colorado. 



4. T. gracilens, Gray. Resembles slender forms of preceding : leaves 

 mostly entire, flaccid, from lanceolate to nearly linear, or some narrowly spatu- 

 late: scape 10 to 18 inches high: head and iuvolucral bracts narrow: flowers 

 deep orange : akenes fusiform-linear, 3 or 4 lines long ; the very slender beak 4 

 or 5 lines long: pappus soft, but not flaccid. Proc. Am. Acad. xix. 71. Moun- 

 tains in N. Wyoming to Oregon and Washington Territory. 



81. TARAXACUM, Haller. DANDELION. 



Perennials, sending up in the spring, from a rosulate cluster of runcinate- 

 pinnatifid or lyrate radical leaves, naked fistulous scapes, which elongate with 

 and after the blooming of the showy head of yellow flowers : involucre re- 

 flexed at maturity : fruit, with the expanded pappus raised on the elongated 

 beak, displayed in a globose body. 



1. T. officinale, Weber. Root vertical: leaves from spatulate-oblong to 

 lanceolate, from irregularly dentate to runcinate-pinnatifid : akenes oblong- 

 obovate or narrower, abruptly contracted into a conical or pyramidal apex, 

 which is prolonged into a filiform beak of twice or thrice the length of the 

 akene. In the ordinary form of the fields the involucral bracts are obscurely 

 or not at all corniculate, and the calyculate bracts are linear, elongated, and 

 recurved ; leaves usually lobed. T. Dens-leonis, Desf. Common everywhere 

 in fields and yards. 



Var. alpinum, Koch. Outer involucral bracts ovate to broadly lanceo- 

 late, spreading, none conspicuously corniculate. Labrador to British Colum- 

 bia, and southward along higher mountains to Colorado and California. 



Var. lividum, Koch. Outer involucral bracts ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 

 all apt to be dark-colored in drying, obscurely or not at all corniculate : leaves 

 from denticulate to runcinate-dentate, sometimes pinnatifid. T. palustre, DC. 

 Rocky Mountains, from New Mexico to the Arctic coast. 



