THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF CHAERO- 

 PHYLLUM.* 



B. F. Bush. 



Any one looking over a large collection of specimens of 

 this genus, will at once be struck by the remarkable confu- 

 sion of the species, such very different species as C. Tex- 

 anum^ C. Tainturieri^ C. procumhensy and C dasycarpum, 

 being labeled C. procumbens or C Tainturieri indiscrimi- 

 nately. All of this tends to show that the species of this 

 genus have never been clearly understood, and it is my inten- 

 tion in the present paper to show that the species are readily 

 distinguishable by good permanent characters. My attention 

 was first drawn to this genus by some plants collected on my 

 journeys to Texas in 1899 and 1900, which were so noticeably 

 different from the supposedly same species of Missouri, that 

 I began an investigation, which resulted in the conclusion 

 that there was an unnamed species in Eastern Texas. 

 Early in last year I had the pleasure of receiving Dr. Rose's 

 splendid monograph of the North American Umbelliferae, in 

 which I found he had described C haerophyllum Texanum, the 

 unnamed species that I had under consideration. 



Having already done some work on the genus, I still con- 

 tinued to observe the species in the field during last year, and 

 also studied the plants in the herbarium, and now present the 

 results in this paper. 



The conclusions I have come to are somewhat at variance 

 with the disposition of the species by Dr. Rose in the mono- 

 graph of the North American Umbelliferae, but Dr. Rose 

 himself in this work differs very much from Dr. Gray, Dr. 

 Chapman and Prof. Britton in the acceptation of species in 

 this genus, giving specific rank to 6^ Tamturieri and estab- 

 lishing one more new variety, O. Tainturieri Floridanum, 



* Presented by title to The Academy of Science of St. Louis, April 21, 

 1902. 



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