406 COMPOSITE. Soliva. 



96. SOLIVA, Paiiz & Pavon. 

 Head many-flowered, heterogamous, of many pistillate and apetaloixs flo-vvers, and 

 a few perfect but mostly sterile flowers in the centre. Scales of the involucre 5 to 

 10, nearly equal, in one or two series, scarious-margined. Eeceptacle flat, naked. 

 Disk-flowers tubular, thickish, 2 - 6-toothed ; their style often undivided. Akenes 

 obcompressed, with rigid wings or callous margins, the summit of which is usually 

 pointed, and the apex armed by the indurated persistent style, destitute of pappus. 

 — Small and depressed herbs of S. America (one naturalized on the shores of the 

 Atlantic United States, and one seemingly indigenous to California) : leaves petioled 

 and pinnately divided into small and narrow segments : heads sessile, in fruit glo- 

 bose : flowers greenish or yellowish. 



1. S. daucifolia, Nutt. Annual, difl'use or creeping, about a span high, soft- 

 hairy : leaves once or twice pinnately dissected into rather few linear acute divisions : 

 lieads small (2 or 3 lines broad), sessile in the forks : scales of the involucre ovate, 

 acuminate : akenes minutely hairy, obovate, with the liroad or narrow and thin 

 wings entire, each terminating upwards in an incurved tooth or point. — Torr. & 

 Gray, Yl ii. 425. 



Moist grounds near the coast, from Santa Barbara to Mendocino Co. Much like S. scssUis of 

 Chili ; the wings of the akenes very variable in breadth, broad and thin in some well-developed 

 specimens, often wanting towards the base of the akene, or rarely developed there into separate 

 teeth or lobes. 



Tribe VIII. SEXECIOXIDE.E. 



Distinguished generally by the involucre of one or two series of more or less 

 herbaceous equal scales, or calyculate with some shorter ones at base ; the pappus of 

 soft and fine capillary bristles, generally more delicate than in any of the ijreceding 

 tribes ; and the receptacle not chaffy. Anthers often sagittate at base, but without 

 tails. Style-branches of perfect flowers various, but commonly truncate or somewhat 

 capitate at tip, rarely prolonged into an appendage. Flowers almost always yellow. 



Crocidium multicaitle, Hook., found on the banks of the Columbia Eiver, a delicate little 

 plant with the aspect of Senecio, is likely to occur on the northwestern borders of the State. 



97. PETASITES, Touni. 

 Head many-flowered, heterogamous, more or less dioecious ; the numerous pistillate 

 flowers in the margin either with filiform or (in ours) with distinctly ligulate rays. 

 Involucre campanulate or cylindraceous ; its scales nearly in a single series, and 

 usually with some small and loose subulate bracts at base. Eeceptacle flat. Flowers 

 in the sterile plant very numerous in the disk and rather few in the ray ; in the 

 fertile very few perfect or infertile ones at the centre, the rest pistillate. Corolla 

 of the hermaphrodite flowers with a .5-cleft limb ;- their style entire or barely 

 2-lobed at the club-shaped puberulent summit. Akenes glabrous, 5 - lO-ribbed. 

 Pappus of copious long and soft capillary bristles, fewer in the sterile flowers. — 

 Herbs of northern regions ; with creeping rootstocks, sending up large radical pal- 

 mately veined leaves on long petioles, and stout scapes in spring, beset with scaly 

 or imperfectly foliaceous clasi>ing bracts, and terminated by a racemose or cymose 

 cluster of rather small heads : flowers purjilisli or white. — Petasites & Nardosmia, DC. 



