236 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



P. galioides, which Dr. Parry reduces to a synonym of 

 P. macroptera, is in our herbarium specimens much more 

 unlike that species than is P. fniticosa, which seems to dif- 

 fer from it only in its more shrubby and compact habit and 

 shorter nodes. The leaves in Mr. Bryant's specimens 

 are spatulate-obovate, but much broader than in P.frnticosa 

 — in Mr. Greene's specimens of P. galioides they are very 

 narrow. The flowers, so far as known, as well as the akenes, 

 are identical in all. It is possible that these plants are 

 sometimes dioecious, but P. macroptera, at least in our spec- 

 imens, has male and female flowers from the same axils — 

 the former soon falling. The embryo agrees with the di- 

 agnosis of Pterostegia in Benth. & Hook. Gen. PI. (who 

 place it in Koenigiese, not in Eriogonese) — "Embryo excen- 

 tricus, curvus, cotyledonibus suborbiculatis, radicula long- 

 iuscula accumbenti-ascendente." As compared with that of 

 P. drymarioides it is not quite so much curved, aud its 

 cotyledons are oval or oblong instead of suborbicular. 



Any distinctions founded upon variations in form or de- 

 velopment of the bracts lose all force upon examination of 

 our familiar California species. It seems not to be known 

 that this species {P. drymarioides) fruits in two different 

 forms on the same plant, although Hooker and Arnott as 

 long ago as the publication of Bot. Beechy described the 

 flowers as polygamous. The two flowers springing from 

 the axils of opposite leaves are usually unequally developed, 

 one matures in the ordinary variable wing-saccate shape, 

 and the other either aborts and falls, or the bract is folded 

 simply and closely round the akene the meeting margins 

 erose-denticulate, or, especially in the southern forms, the 

 bract is so little developed that the maturing akene projects 

 one-half its length beyond it. 



Amarantus Palmer: Watson. 



Atriplex Barclayana Dietr. ? 



SU^DA TORREYANA Watson. 



