44 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



widely varying ecological conditions and the progeny care- 

 fully compared with each other and with the parent plants. 

 It may be remarked here that such work in Experimental 

 Ecology should have been gotten under way by our Gardens 

 long ago. When this work shall have become cooperative 

 it will yield results of wonderful import in systematic botany. 

 A few years of it will give us more positive knowledge of 

 plant forms than hundreds of years of herbarium study. 

 Evidence drawn from the latter must remain circumstantial 

 and opinionative. The experimental work would exercise a 

 profound influence in the elucidation of such groups as Violas 

 Aster y Antennaria^ Apocynum, Senecio, Nemophila^ Esch- 

 scholtziay Sisyrinchium, and the ElepJiantopeae . 



The study of the North American Elephantopae has led into 

 an examination of those of our tropics and finally into a study 

 of the whole group. The notes presented here are distinctly 

 preliminary and tentative. If they shall call marked atten- 

 tion to the group and the great necessity for the especial 

 attention of field workers to it, the principal object of these 

 first notes on the group (as a whole) to be published in 

 English, will have been accomplished. The studies will be 

 continued as more and better material accumulates. 



Those plants grouped under the Elephantopeae differ from 

 the Vernonieae and Eupatorieae in having the few-flowered 

 (two to four) anthodia small, sessile, and gathered into com- 

 pact terminal or lateral glomerulae. 



In 1737 Linnaeus described the genus Elephantopus, of 

 which scaber must be taken as the type. In 1792, Rohr fol- 

 lowed with the genus PseudelephantopuSy using spicatus as 

 its type. Later writers seem to have disregarded Pseud- 

 elephantopus , for Cassini founded Distreptits, and La Llave, 

 Malamoriay on the same type. There seems to be no ques- 

 tion as to the application of the un wieldly name Pseudelephan- 

 topus to our well-known plant. Lessing, in 1829, described 

 ElephantosiSi basing it on quadriflora, which afterwards he 

 determined as synonymous with angustifoUus. Spirochaeta 

 Turczaninow, appeared in 1851 with Funckii as its type. 

 This plant seems never to have been recognized except by its 

 describer. The name Euelephantopus was first used as of sec- 



