246 GLEASON: TAXONOMIC STUDIES IN VERNONIA 
Type: Tracy 8015, collected at Tensaw, Alabama, August 18, 
1904, and deposited in the herbarium of the New York Botanical 
Garden. Other specimens are: Tracy 6970 from Ocean: Springs, 
Mississippi; Tracy 478¢ 4780 from Coopolis, Mississippi; and various 
specimens collected “by Mohr at or near Mobile, Alabama. In 
some specimens the leaf-pubescence is reduced in amount until 
the leaf resembles that of V. altissima. Such plants have been in- 
cluded under this variety because of the size of the heads, the char- 
acter of the involucre and inflorescence, and the presence of resin. 
_ Vernonia aborigina sp. nov. 
Stem sc eR striate or ribbed, covered with a 
brown tomentum becoming thicker above; leaf-blades ovate- 
lanceolate, conuests denticulate with low ascending callous teeth, 
acuminate, narrowed below into an obtuse or rounded sessile or 
subsessile base, 8-15 cm. long, scabrous above with short papillose 
hairs, densely brown-tomentose beneath; inflorescence rather 
small and compact, 11-13 cm. wide and bearing relatively few 
(about 30) heads; bracteal leaves on the cyme-branches lance- 
oblong, 10-15 mm. long; heads large, in fruit about 12 mm. high, 
containing in the single head counted 68 flowers; involucre broadly 
rounded at the base, 7-8 mm. high, expanding to 16-18 mm. wide 
at maturity; involucral scales closely and regularly imbricated, the 
outer minute and triangular and all squarrose or recurved at the 
tip, acute, sparingly ciliate along the brown margin, resinous- 
glandular and thinly puberulent along the purple central two 
thirds, elsewhere green and glabrous, tipped with a rather promi- 
nent carinate midvein which is frequently prolonged into a short 
mucro; achenes 3.5 mm. long, olive in color, with low ridges and 
broad flat furrows, conspicuously glandular in the furrows, 
minutely and sparsely puberulent on the ridges; pappus-bristles 
reddish-tawny, almost plumose below, merely barbellate above, 
7 mm. long, paleae as long as the diameter of the achene, narrowly 
linear, equaling in width or barely wider than the bristles 
The type was collected by P. H. Rolfs in Oklahoma, west of 
Fort Smith, Arkansas, August, 1891, and is deposited in the 
herbarium of Iowa Agricultural College as sheet number 32272. 
No other material has been examined. 
The description of this new species is offered with considerable 
reluctance, because of the great variabilty of the western species 
and their known tendency to hybridize. In several features it 
differs from all other western species. The large heads, the un- 
