1905] ELMER—NEW WESTERN PLANTS 45 
Dunes and terraces about Surf, Santa Barbara county, California, May 1902. 
Type specimen, no. 3639, in Herb. Stanford University. 
It is now just sixty-six years since NUTTALL first discovered on an island in San 
Diego Bay a Malacothrix which Torrey and Gray described (Fl. N. Am. 2: 486, 
1838-40) as M. incana. Fifty years later GREENE rediscovered it growing 
abundantly on San Miguel, the smallest and remotest of the Santa Barbara 
Islands; he also found it on the western extremity of Santa Cruz Island, a dis- 
tance of 200 miles northwestward from its type locality.. My plant from Surf is 
similar, but in my opinion is specifically distinct, though very closely related to 
M. incana. 
Carduus maritima, n. sp.—Succulent maritime biennial or peren- 
nial, from strong thick tap roots: stems 1™ long, much branched 
from the base and up to the middle, giving the plant a rounded 
bushy appearance; branches covered with long white appressed 
hairs and terminating in 1-3 heads: leaves thick, felty, densely and 
thickly lanate pubescent, 1-2°™ long, the blade proper ovate in out- 
line, the lower one-third abruptly narrowed, its base semi-auriculate, 
the entire margin irregularly and dentately lobed and beset with 
straight needle-pointed spines which are more numerous toward the 
base than on the coarse lobes of the blades: heads large, dull white, 
5°™ long, nearly that in width, loosely corymbose: bracts many, 
imbricate, nearly equal in length; the exterior ones similar to the 
leaves in lobation, spinescence, and pubescence; the interior ones 
linear-lanceolate, sharply acuminate, the lower and inner surface 
wholly glabrous, finely spinescent on the margins above the middle: 
the dense bristly hairs of the receptacle not hispid, dark brown, 
12™™ Jong: achene 6™™ long, flattened, narrowly obovoid or cuneate; 
brown and shining, usually somewhat curved: pappus bristles inter- 
laced with fine secondary ones except at the apex, 2°™ long, dull 
white, attached as a whole to the apical rim of the achene: corolla 
tubular, 2.5°™ long, segments 4™™ long, the tube funnelform or 
slightly inflated immediately beneath the lobes: anthers united and 
pubescent, er long: stigma barely notched. 
Surf, Santa Barbara county, California, May 1902. Type specimen, no. 
3631, in oa Soaked University. 
The habitat of this species is strictly ee and most probably it can be found 
on the islands and possibly in other localities along the coast. I found only a few 
plants on the most exposed dunes, on which they formed low spreading bushes 
not very dissimilar to the Russian thistle. Its low succulent halophytic habit, 
remarkable pubescence and peculiar lobation and spinescence of its leaves readily 
distinguish it from all other species of this — 
