268 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Var.WALLACEiGray, (8. fragrans Greene), differs from the 

 type in beiug more villous and having more glabrous nut- 

 lets, and a less broadly campanulate calyx, with longer and 

 more slender teeth. The corolla is purplish in all the 

 specimens seen; otherwise, like the common form about 

 San Francisco. The leaves are much the same, but the 

 villous pubescence masks the immersed glands, on which 

 the "resinous-viscidity" of the common form depends. It 

 is, of course, impossible to accommodate everyone's taste, 

 but it Avill be amusing to most Californians to hear our 

 "wood-balm" stigmatized as having an "ill-smelling 

 leaf." 



Eriogonum latifolium Smith. K arachnoideum Esch. 

 E. nudum Dougl. E. oblongifoliam, auriculatum &. afjine 

 Benth. E. grande & ruhescens Greene. 



The two species E. latifolium and E. nudum, recognized in 

 the Botany of California, were even then known to approach 

 each other very closely, and observations since made, prove 

 that they can no longer be kept apart. E. latifolium was 

 described from the form found only along the immediate 

 coast, and extends but a short distance inland, merging 

 by gradations into nudum, which was supposed to differ 

 from it in having fistulous peduncles, glabrous involucres, 

 and smaller and more scattered heads. In collections made 

 during the past two years, all these distinctions are found 

 to fail — nudum, from the interior, with small scattered 

 heads, often having pithy "peduncles" and involucres 

 as tomentose, as in E. latifolium of the coast. 



E. grande Greene {E. nudum \ fix. pauci/iorum Watson), is 

 stated to be "near E. nudum, but distinguished by its 

 rotate perianth and villous filaments." The author was 

 probably misled by the somewhat ambiguous wording 

 of Bot. Cal. ii. 26, for in all the length and breadth 

 of our State the writer never saw a specimen of nudum 

 which did not have filaments villous at the base, and 



