258 BORRAGINACE^. (BORAGE FAMILY.) 



9 Onosmodium. Corolla tubular or oblong-funnelform, with open and wholly unap- 

 pendaged throat; the lobes erect or hardly spreading ; the sinuses more or less in- 

 flexed. Style filiform or capillary, very long: stigma exserted before the corolla opens. 

 Nutlets ovoid or globular, bony, smooth and polished, white. Flowers all subtended 

 by leafy bracts. 



1. COLDENIA, L. 



Low herbaceous plants, canescent or hispid : with small and mostly white 

 flowers sessile and usually in clusters : leaves entire, petioled, veined. 



1. C. Nuttallii, Hook Prostrate annual, repeatedly and divergently 

 dichotomous : leaves ovate or rhomboid-rotund, 2 to 4 lines long and on longer 

 petioles, with 2 or 3 pairs of strong and somewhat curving veins, and margins 

 somewhat revolute : flowers densely clustered in the forks and at the ends of 

 the naked branches : filaments iuserted nearly in the throat of the pink or 

 whitish corolla, the tube of which bears 5 short obtuse scales near the base : 

 nutlets marked with a linear and rhaphe-like ventral scar. Dry plains, from 

 Wyoming to Washington Territory, and southward to Arizona and California. 



2. HELIOTROPIUM, Tourn. HELIOTROPE. 



Low herbs or undershrubs : the flowers almost always small. In ours the 

 corolla is large, white, and not appendaged 



* Fruit didifinous, solid: anthers slightly cohering by their minutely bearded tips : 



sti/le long and filiform ; cone of the stigma truncate and bearded with a pencil- 

 late tuft of strong bristles : flowers scattered. 



1. H. COnvolvulaceum, Gray. Low spreading annual, strigose-hirsute 

 and hoary, much branched : leaves lanceolate or sometimes nearly ovate and 

 sometimes linear, short-petioled : flowers generally opposite the leaves and 

 terminal, short-peduncled : limb of the corolla ample, angulate-lobed ; the 

 tube strigose-hirsute, about twice the length of the sepals, Sandy plains, 

 Nebraska to W. Texas and westward. 



* * Fruit 4-lobed : anthers free: stifle none; stigma umbrella-shaped, not sur- 



mounted by a cone: flowers in distinct unilateral scorp/oid spikes. 



2. H. Curassavicum, L. Wholly glabrous and glaucous, diffusely 

 spreading, a span to a foot high : leaves succulent, oblanceolate, varying from 

 nearly linear to obovate : spikes mostly in pairs or twice forked, densely 

 flowered : corolla white, with a yellow eye : stigma as wide as the glabrous 

 ovary, flat. Along the sea-coasts, also in the interior in saline soils. 



3. ECHINOSPERMUM, Lehm. STICKSEED. 



Either pubescent or hispid : with racemose or spicate flowers, usually small, 

 bluish or whitish. The nutlets are troublesome burs. 



* Racemes panicled, leafy-bracteate only at base, minutely bracteate or bractless 



above: pedicels recurved or deflexed in fruit: calyx-lobes shorter than the fruit, 



and at length reflexed under it: scar of the nutlets ovate or triangular : plants 



pubescent or hirsute, but not hispid. In ours the corolla is rotate. 



1. E. floribundum, Lehm. Rather strict, 2 feet or more high, or some- 



| times smaller: leaves from oblong- to linear-lanceolate; the lowest tapering into 





