152 COMPOSITE, (composite family.) 



firm-chartaceous, and all but innermost with a thickened greenish spot at 

 the very obtuse apex : pappus fine and soft, rather short. — Proc. Am. Acad, 

 xii. 58. Colorado mountains, in Middle Park and Gunnison Valley ; also in 

 Utah. 



* * * Heads several to many-flowered : bracts of the involucre coriaceous, and 



usually somtichat herbaceous or thickened at the obtuse apex, all strictly ap- 

 pressed and imbricated, but the vertical ranks inconspicuous : akenes pubescent ; 

 leaves linear, entire or sparingly dentate : herbaceous down to the suffrutescent 

 base. 



11. B. pluriflora, Gray. Leaves narrowly linear, entire : heads \b to \%- 

 flowered, 4 lines high : involucre somewhat turbinate, very smooth ; its thinnish 

 bracts lanceolate, acute: otherwise like the next, of which it is probably a 

 form. — Colorado? probably on the Arkansas or South Fork of the Platte, 

 James in Long's expedition. 



12. B. Wrightii, Gray. Commonly glabrous or nearly so : stems rather 

 strict and slender, a foot or two high : leaves thickish, narrowly linear, entire, 

 sometimes lower ones sparingly laciniate-deniate, margins either smooth or spar- 

 ingly scabrous: heads (4 or 5 lines high) 7 to \5 flowered, usually numerous 

 and crowded in a corymbiform cyme : bracts of the involucre oval-oblong to 

 broadly lanceolate, obtuse; the back at or near the apex usually greenish. — 

 W. Texas to S. Colorado and Arizona. 



Var. hirtella, Gray. Leaves cinereous-hirtellous or hirsute-pubescent and 

 roughish, but often glabrate in age or only ciliolate : stems sometimes pubes- 

 cent. — Synopt. Fl. i. 142. Same range. 



11. SOLIDAGO, L. Golden-rod. 



Herbs, with mostly strict stems, entire or serrate alternate leaves, the cau- 

 line sessile or nearly so, the radical tapering into margined petioles : the small 

 heads thyrsoid-glomerate, or sometimes cymose, or more commonl}' in raceme- 

 like secund clusters : flowers yellow. 



§ 1. Receptacle honeycombed: rays generally fewer or not more numerous than 

 disk-flowers. — Virgaurea. 



* Heads mostly large, 4 fo 6 lines long, many flowered, collected in thyrsoidal in- 



florescence which is not at all secund nor raceme-like: rays 6 fo 14: akenes 



pubescent : leaves veiny from a simple midrib, mostly bright green : stems low. 

 Ours are mountain or high-latitude forms. 



1. S. multiradiata, Ait. Villous-pubescent above or glabrate: leaves 

 minutely and spnringh/ serrate above, sometimes entire; cauline spatulate to 

 lanceolate, all tapering gradually to the base, or the radical into a slender mar- 

 gined petiole : heads generally few and glomerate in a single terminal roundish 

 or oblong compact cluster, occasionally Avith one or two looser axillary clusters 

 or branches : bracts of the involucre narrowly lanceolate, acute : rays numerous 

 and narrow. — S. Virgaurea, var. inultiradiata, Torr. & Gray. Across the con- 

 tinent in high latitudes and extending southward along the Rocky Mountains 

 to Colorado and New INIexico, where the usual form is 



Var. SCOpulorum, Gray. More glabrous, 3 to 18 inches high, commonly 

 vStrict: heads when numerous in a more open or compound cluster, mostly 



