Lessingia. COMPOSIT.E. o^w 



alveolate. Anthers included, tipped with a setaceous-subulate appendage. Branches 

 of tlie style tipped with a very short and obtuse or truncate appendage which is 

 thickly covered with hispid bristles in a tuft, and often with a central cusp, or else 

 with a longer subulate and less strongly hispid appendage. Akenes all' fertile, 

 silky-villous, turbinate or cuneiform, more or less compressed. Pappus simple' 

 mostly shorter than the corolla (especially in the marginal flowers), of numerous 

 unequal rigid scabrous bristles, usually turning reddish-brown. — Annual or bien- 

 nial (probably never truly perennial) herbs, all Cahfornian, with slender branches, 

 clothed (at least when young) with flocculent more or less deciduous wool. Leaves 

 alternate, thickish, those of the branches sessile. Heads rather small. Flowers in 

 the original species yellow (sometimes turning purple in age), in most if not all the 

 others blue-purple or white. (Nerves of the corolla-lobes deeply intramarginal, the 

 aestivation indupHcate up to the nerve.) — Cham, in Linna^a, iv. 203 ; Gray in 

 Benth. PI. Hartw. 315, in Proc. Am. Acad. vii. 351, & viii. 634. 

 § 1. Limb of the corolla more or less oUiquely or 2mlmntely ^-parted, at least iti the 

 marginal flowers : _ branches of the style very obtuse and xoith a brush-like tvft 

 of bristles m which the minute setiform aiypendage Uvhen there is an,/) is 

 nearly hidden. "^ ' 



. l- p- G^ermanorum, Cham. Low, much branched, spreading on the -round 

 at nrst wlntish-tumentuse, soon greener : lower leaves spatulate and pinnatihd ; the 

 upper oblong or linear and sparingly incised or toothed, or on the branchlets small 

 and bract-like, and occasionally granulose-glandular, as are the spreading green tips 

 ot the involucre: heads terminating slender divergent branchlets, 1 5 - 25-^flowered • 

 corollas yellow the marginal ones conspicuously enlarged, palmate and formin- a 

 kind of ray, their stamens sometimes abortive. — Torr. Bot. Wilkes Exp. 330 t 7 

 (style wrongly delineated.) ^ ' • ' 



Hillsides and open gi'ounds, rather abundant from San Diego Co. to San Francisco. Head with 



fn7rc':x;;Sikr;j>J"'* '" '^^^ '^ '""^*"' *^^ ^'-^^--■^^ ^^^^ p^^-^^^ ™-g-=^i coroYia: ^ 



2 L. ramulosa, Gray. Erect and diffusely paniculate-branched, a span to a 

 loot or two lu height, wliite-woolly, becoming naked and usually glandular with 

 age : caulme leaves oblong or lanceolate, thickish, entire or serrulate ; those of the 

 branches small, ovate or oblong, closely sessile by a cor<late partly clasping base 

 gradually reduced to minute bracts : heads terminating slender diverging branchlets 

 10-20-flowered: scales of the involucre acute and the greenish tips appressed : 

 corollas violet-purple, the marginal ones a little enlarged and slightly oblic/ue —PI 

 Hartw. 1. c. ; Bot. Wilkes Exp. 1. c. o J i • • 



Plains, &c from near San Francisco to Mendocino Co. Heads rather smaller than of the 

 preceding. A slender and diffuse form, with smaller heads (var. tenuis), occurs from Monterev ? 

 (Douglas) to Peru Creek, at 5,100 feet, Rothrock. i»ionierey 



_ 3. L. nana, Gray, 1. c. Dwarf and depressed, 1 to 3 inches high, very woolly • 

 simple or clustered stems thickly beset with the spatulate or lanceolate entire leaves ■ 

 heads terminal and axillary, closely sessile, 1 - 1 2-flowered : scales of the invo- 

 lucre Imear-lanceolate, chartaceous and with scarious margins ; the innermost con- 

 spicuously acuminate, almost cartilaginous wlien dry, equaUing the disk : cor.illa.-^ 

 (apparently purplisli) little exserted, mostly regularly 5-lobed. — Bot. Wilkes Exp 

 1. c. t. 7. ^ 



T ^^ ^^"^ Sacramento, Dr. Pickering, Rnv. Mr. Fitch. Foot-hills of the southern Sierra Nevada 

 J. Mmr, Dr. Rothrock. A singular little plant, with the heads comparatively large, i. e. half ai'i 

 mchlong; the puiple pappus nearly equalling the (lorollas, and conspicuously contrastiiK' with 

 ttie white wool. It is poorly figured in the work referred to. 



