JO The West American Scientist. 



red flowered plants, I have found other varieties, white, green, 

 brown and other shades in flowers and spines — until no constant 

 character can be found by which to distinguish between them. 



English cacti-culturists claim that E. Orcuttii is identical with 

 the old E. Californicus, a name considered synonymous with E. 

 viridescens by Dr. Engelmann. A great variety of plants have 

 reached the European market under the latter name, which, con- 

 sidering its natural variations, is not to be wondered at. 



I have carefully studied every lorm in Southern California, and 

 northern Lower California that I have been able to learn of, and 

 I have been forced to the conclusion that only three true species 

 exist within our limits: E. polycephalus (belonging to a distinct 

 section of 1 he genus,) E. Wislizeni and E. viridescens. Under 

 E. Wislizeni I would class as varieties E. cylindraceus and E. 

 Lecontei; while under E. viridescens I would place E. Emoryi 

 and E. Orcuttii as sufficiently well-marked varieties. Several 

 other varieties of both these species could be sufficiently distin- 

 guished to satisfy the foreign trade. Perhaps these views will 

 not be retained when I become more familiar with Arizona, New 

 Mexico and Mexican forms, but they are certainly in line with 

 the later views of Dr. Engelmann, the greatest authority on the 

 family that we have had. 



C. R. Orcuft. 



PAPA VER CALIFORNICUM. 



(From Garden a«d Forest, iii, 385) 



This true poppy, the only one indigenous to California, was 

 discovered in i8S(S in the Santa Inez mountains by Mr. John 

 Spence, of Santa Barbara. It was described by Dr. Asa Gray 

 in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, Vol. XXII, pp. 313-314, thus being one of the last Cali- 

 fornia flowers to receive a name at the hands of that illustrious 

 botanist. Not only is it one of the latest discoveries, but it justly 

 ranks among the handsomest of the annuals of the Pacific Coast. 



It is rarely found except on ground which has been burnt over, 

 Mr. Spence first finding it far away from any cultivated fields at 

 an elevation of 1,500 to 2,000 feet, on ground which had been 

 covered principally with manzanita bushes, but had been burned 

 over the year before. Probably for this reason and from its 

 close resemblance in appearance to Meconopsis heterophylla, a 

 less showy plant, but with flowers almost identical in size and 

 coloring, it owes its escape from previous discovery. 



As Dr, Gray suspected, this is not a local species, but is ap- 

 parently widely distributed in Southern California, having re- 

 cently been collected by several botanists in widely separated 

 localities, but everywhere under similar conditions as first found, 

 on tracts of burnt brush-lands at from one to two thousand feet 

 elevation. This spring I observed it in great abundance back of 

 San Diego, near Potrero, and also between the Cajon and Santa 



