A REVISION OF THE GENUS NEMOPHILA.^ 



Harley p. Chandler, 



(with plates ii~v) 



The North American genus Nemophila is represented by 

 fourteen species and four varieties. Two species belong to the 

 southern states, one primarily to the Rocky mountains, and the 

 remainder to the Pacific slope, principally California. 



It is one of the genera in which the tendency to variation is 

 very strong, and this has been the source of much error and 

 confusion in classification. Many of the common species were 

 described by Europeans who were innocent of field experience 

 on the Pacific coast, and this quite naturally resulted in mistakes. 

 The types of these species have not been easily accessible to 

 American botanists and confusion has been worse confounded 

 by their diverse interpretations of the meager published descrip- 

 tions. 



The present paper was undertaken in the hope first of clarify- 

 ing the synonomy. To this end original descriptions have been 

 freely consulted, some forty type specimens have been exam- 

 ined, and drawings of two types have been obtained from 

 Europe. Exhaustive lists of acknowledged synonyms have not 

 been introduced, but all disputed names and those of recent 

 publication have received attention. The second and more 

 important hope of the writer was to contribute something to our 

 knowledge of the plants themselves, by a study of their varia- 

 tions in the field, as well as in the herbarium. The best way of 

 expressing both classes of results seemed to lie in a revision of 

 the genus. 



Discussions of the various characters available for discrimi- 

 nating forms will be found in the remarks following the descrip- 

 tions of certain species. Here it will suffice to say that the 



'Contributions from the Botanical Laboratories of the University of California. 



194 [SEPTEMBElt 



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