184 COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 



all yellow : disk at length columnar, an inch or more long. Plains, from the 

 Rocky Mountains to the Saskatchewan and Texas. 



Var. pulcherrima, Torr. & Gray. A part or even the whole upper face 

 of the ray brown-purple. From Arizona to Texas and Nebraska. 



36. BALSAMORBHIZA, Hook. 



Low; with thick, deep and balsamic roots ; a tuft of radical leaves mostly 

 on long petioles ; and short simple few-leaved flowering stems or naked scapes, 

 bearing large and mostly solitary heads of yellow flowers. 



* Leaves entire or nearly so; the principal ones cordate or with cordate base and 



long-pet ioled. 



1. B. sagittata, Nutt. Silvery-canescent, and the involucre white-woolly : 

 radical leaves from cordate-oblong to hastate, 4 to 9 inches long, the base 2 to 

 G inches wide, on petioles of greater length ; the few and inconspicuous cauline 

 from linear to spatulate : scape at length a foot or more high : rays 1 to 2 

 inches long. Mountains of Colorado to Montana and British Columbia. 

 Used for food by the Indians. 



* * Leaves neither entire nor cordate, varying from Jacinialely dentate to bipin- 



nately divided: heads solitary on a naked scape or one bearing a pair of small 

 opposite leaves towards the base. 



2. B. macrophylla, Nutt. Green, not at all canescent, glabrate, except 

 the ciliate margins of the leaves, usually minutely glandular-viscidulous : 

 leaves ample, ovate or oblong in outline, a span to a foot long, some with only one 

 or two lobes or coarse teeth, most of them pinnate! y parted into broad 1 1/ lanceo- 

 late and commonly entire lobes : scapes a foot or two high : bracts of the invo- 

 lucre from narrowly lanceolate to spatulate and foliaceous, an inch or two 

 long, nearly equal, either half or fully the length of the rays. Trans. Am. 

 Phil. Soc. vii. 350. Rocky and Wahsatch Mountains, Wyoming to Utah. 



3. B. Hookeri, Nutt. Canescent with fine sericeous or more tomentose pu- 

 bescence, but not at all hirsute : scapes and leaves a span to a foot high ; the 

 latter lanceolate or elongated-oblong in outline, pinnately or bipinnateli/ parted into 

 lanceolate or linear divisions or lobes, or some of them only pinnatifid or incised : 

 involucre from canescently puberulent to lanate; its bracts from linear- to 

 oblong-lanceolate, either unequal and well imbricated or sometimes the outer- 

 most foliaceous and enlarged. Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 301 . West of our range, 

 but represented by 



Var. incana, Gray. Densely whife-tomentose : leaves often of broader out- 

 line. Synopt. Fl. i. 266. D. incana, Nutt. Wyoming and Montana to 

 N. California. 



37. WYETHIA, Nutt. 



Stout and mostly low ; with ample undivided pinnately veined alternate 

 leaves (mostly entire), and large heads of mostly yellow flowers. 



# Rays from pale yellow or dull straw-color to white. 



1. W. helianthoides, Nutt. A span to a foot and a half high, simple 

 and Avith a single large head, or rarely 3 or 4, hirsute : leaves from oval to 



