250 GLEASON: TAXONOMIC STUDIES IN VERNONIA 
Among the many interesting plants collected by Charles Wright 
in Cuba, his number 2789, described by Grisebach as Vernonia 
lepidota, is one of the least known. Wright described it as a 
suffruticose plant, ascending on bushes to a height of about 3 
meters, with purple flowers. The Gray Herbarium contains a 
large specimen which shows the foliar characters very well, but is 
too immature for a careful study of the floral structures, achenes, 
or pappus. Ekman examined three sheets of the same number in 
European herbaria, including Grisebach’s type, and has published 
the first good description of its reproductive structures. A few 
of his observations have been verified at the Gray Herbarium. 
Ekman points out that its anthers and styles agree with those of 
the genus Vernonia, but that its pappus is entirely different. 
The inner pappus is composed of not more than seven flattened 
bristles, and the outer of scales which are coalescent into a cylin- 
drical tube with lacerose margin. This feature alone is sufficient 
to warrant the erection of a genus for it, which may appropriately 
be named in Ekman’s honor. 
EKMANIA gen. nov. 
Inflorescence a corymbiform cluster, freely branched and 
beset with petiolate bract-like leaves; heads homogamous, few- 
flowered; involucre of a few series of closely appressed scales; 
corolla glandular without; style and anthers as in Vernonia; 
achene glabrous, ten-ribbed; pappus biseriate, the outer of a 
cylindrical tube with lacerose margin, the inner of five to seven 
stout flattened bristles; stem and foliage lepidote. 
Type species: Vernonia lepidota Griseb. 
Ekmania lepidota (Griseb.) comb. nov. 
Vernonia lepidota Griseb. Cat. Pl. Cub. 145. 1866. 
Leaf-blades elliptic-oblong, the larger ones 3.5 X 8 cm., the 
upper smaller, thinly silvery-lepidote above, densely fulvous- 
lepidote beneath, entire, obtuse or subacute, prominently veined; 
the larger bracteal leaves petiolate, 10-13 mm. long and one- 
nerved, the others more crowded distally and gradually reduced 
in size to short subterete scales 2 mm. long, closely appressed to 
the involucre and distinguished from it chiefly by their lepidote 
pubescence; involucre 3 mm. high, its brown scales trough- 
shaped or boat-shaped, acute, pubescent or scurfy on the back. 
