BOTANY OF SIMPSON’S EXPEDITION. 519 
VIII. BOTANY OF SIMPSON’S EXPEDITION. 
From ReEporT oF EXPLORATIONS ACROSS THE GREAT BASIN OF pig IN 1859, ry CHarcr or Capt. J. H. Srwpson, 
. WASHINGTON, 187 
CeRcocaRPus LEDIFoLIvs, Nuttall in Torrey & Gray's Fl. N. Am. 1, p. 427; and in his continuation of [435] 
Michaua’s Sylva, 2, p. 28, t. 51 ; Hooker, l. c. pl. t. 324. — Mountain-Mahogany of the inhabitants of Utah. 
This small evergreen tree is so well described by Nuttall in both works mentioned that not much remains to be 
added. His figure, however, is not a very faithful representation. He says that it grows much like a peach tree, at 
most 15 feet high, aud that the trunk is sometimes as much as a foot in diameter. On the expedition it was found to 
grow rarely as a tree, but usually branching from the base, or several stems from one root; its height was from 8-15 
feet,'and the stems seen had the thickness of 3-6, or, at most, 10 inches. The bark is light gray, tough, smoothish, 
with superficial longitudinal wrinkles and short transverse scars. The wood is hard, heavy, very close-grained, light 
reddish-brown, with white sap; medullary rays very numerous, but extremely fine, scarcely visible with the naked 
eye; the wood is similar to cherry-wood, but harder and heavier. A specimen before me has a diameter of 16 lines, 
14 lines of which are wood, showing 24 annual rings, so that each ring has a thickness of not much more than } line. 
The shoots, or longer branches, have a white, smooth bark, with joints or internodes of about 1 inch in length, 
The leaves, however, are usually crowded at the end of lateral branchlets, a few lines to 1 or 1} inches in length [436] 
closely covered with circular scars. Leaves very thick and leathery, persistent, lanceolate, acute at both ends, 
entire and revolute at the margin, with a thick midrib, prominent on the lower surface, 9-14 lines long, 24-34 lines 
wide, on a petiole 14-2 Sie. long, to the lower part of which adhere lanceolate, brown, scarious stipules. When 
young, the branchlets as well as the leaves are covered all over with short, curly hair; when older, the leaves become 
glabrous and glossy on the upper surface, the lower remaining hairy and assuming a rusty color. The sessile flowers 
are produced in June from the axils of the uppermost leaves of the preceding year’s growth, either single or 2 
or 3 together; short scarious bracts envelop the base of the cylindrical, woolly, calyx-tube, which is 3 lines long; its 
5-lobed, white limb, 3-4 lines in diameter, is very woolly externally, and less so internally, and bears about 20 or 25 
naked, slender filaments, with reniform anthers 4 line in diameter. Immediately after flowering, the silky-feathery 
style becomes elongated, and carries up with it the detached limb of the calyx; at maturity, the style becomes 
a twisted, feathery tail of about 2 inches in length; the inconspicuous, linear, hairy fruit itself is about 4 lines long, 
and remains hid in the persistent calyx-tube; at its top and base I observe a beard of very curious, stiff white 
Oe less than a line in length, thicker in the middle, and tapering toward both extremities. The fruit seems to be 
mewhat persistent, as I find it in specimens collected in spring before the flowering-season. About the time of 
Aisin, the young leaves begin to develop at the end of the branchlets, mst the flowers between them and the 
leaves of the year before. I generally find four or five leaves of the same year’s growth at the end of each branchlet; 
they probably fall off when about 15 or 18 months old. This fine tree, discovered by Nuttall on Bear River, north 
of the Salt Lake, and near “Thornberg’s Ravine” in the Rocky Mountains, was found by the expedition on the 
Lookout Mountains and other mountain-chains of the basin.* 
The name of “ Wild Sage,” now so familiar to every traveller in our western mountain-deserts, was first [444] 
used by Lewis and Clarke, in the narrative of their adventurous expedition, to designate several species of Arte- 
misia or Wormwood, distantly resembling the true garden sage, Salvia officinalis, by their gray foliage and aromatic 
odor. It seems that now this name has, by common use, been restricted to the larger shrubby species, which give a 
peculiar character to the arid plateaus of Western North America, and which are of the highest importance to the 
traveller as “ furnishing the sole article of fuel or shelter which they meet in wandering over these woodless deserts,” 
as already Nuttall informs us in his genera of North American Plants, 2, p. 142. He states that the “ Wild Sage ” is 
his Artemisia Columbiensis, which name was by him improperly substituted for the prior name of A. cana, described 
by Pursh from the original specimens of Lewis and Clarke. Torrey and Gray, in their Flora of N. America, 2, p. 418, 
doubt whether this really is the ‘‘ Wild Sage” of those travellers, and come to the conclusion that that name was 
indiscriminately applied to several shrubby species ; ; they further state that the plant given by Governor Lewis to 
Pursh as “the Sage” is the herbaceous A. Ludoviciana found on the homeward voyage on the Missouri River. 
I have now the means, through information obtained from Mr. H. Engelmann and from Dr. F. V. Hayden, to 
throw a little more light on this question, which is not without importance for botanical geography. The two species 
here in question are : — 
ARTEMISIA CANA, Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. 2, p. 521; Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. 2, p. 418. —Shrubby, with 
woody stem 2-4 inches in diameter, 2-4 feet (on nie Taloweins, Dr. Hayden) or 2-6 feet high (on the Laramie 
* The account of Cactacee, which came here, is reproduced above (pp. 229-233). — 
Pied tetas eee ae PO CAA See TEN ETE LT EM e Naeen te 
