-|' s Muhlenbergia, Volume 5 



ing it. "Exceedingly abundant everywhere except on springy 

 soil. Flowers not waning and going to seed, bright red, shad- 

 ing gradually to green toward the base of the calyx. As may 

 be expected in a species so abundant, many variations appear. 

 Some flowers are yellowish, others shade toward crimson. On 

 dry situations it is often only one-fourth as tall as in moister 

 ones, with foliage much more laciniate and purplish. In moist 

 ground one plant was seen that had leaves one-third of an inch 

 broad and sparingly laciniate. In the same place another plant 

 showed coalescence of stems, and the flowers were bunched al- 

 most into a head. In some plants the bracts are little or not at 

 all colored, in others showy. The species seems to be in what 

 De Vries calls a plastic state or mutation period. It appears to 

 me now that the luxuriant development and many variations 

 were due simply to a change in the habitat condition brought 

 about bv recent log-o-ino-. In the neighboring- virgin forest it 

 was sparingly present and little developed." 



Fasciation seems to be not at all uncommon in the Castil- 

 lejas; the writer noticed several examples this last summer in 

 specimens of C. confusa, found in New Mexico in the Pecos 

 River National Forest. 



Machaeranthera humilis (A. Gray) comb. nov. 



M. tanaceti folia var. humilis A. (irav, PI. Wright. 2: 74. 



^ 1853. 



The following names are synonyms according to Dr. Gray 

 in Syn. Fl. 1 : part 2, 206: 



M. tanacetifolia var. pygmaea A. Gray, PI. Wright. I. c. 



Aster tenacetifolius var. pygmaeus A. Gray, vSyn. Fl. I. c. 



Among the plants forwarded by Professor Thornber was a 

 sheet bearing the label Machaeranthera tanacetifolia. The 

 specimens it contained were so different in appearance from rep- 

 resentatives of that species which arc found abundantly here in 

 New Mexico in our immediate vicinity, that the writer's inter- 

 est was aroused at once. The only mention made of this plant, 

 apparently, is that by Dr. Gray in Plantae Wrightianae. It is 

 barely possible that the plant under discussion may not be the 



