103 



region well. He has on his own initiative constructed an 

 apparatus for distilling the oils of various plants, especially oil 

 of juniper from a species of Sahina (of which he furnished a 

 specimen) obtained high up on the mountains at timber line. 

 Irkutsk, Siberia, 

 August 21, 1927. 



A NEW PINWEED FROM SOUTHERN PENINSULAR 



FLORIDA 



John K. Small 



Some years ago a collector resident in Florida for many years, 

 stated that "Lecheas are scarce in this State." Such a state- 

 ment indicates that at that time much of the State was unex- 

 plored, for today we know about a dozen species of the genus 

 Lechea native within the boundaries of Florida. The following 

 proposed species grows in the most southern island of scrub 

 known on the eastern coast. It is now well within the city 

 limits of Miami. A few years ago the spruce-pine {Pinus clausa) 

 and the rosemary {Ceratiola ericoides) grew there, but frequent 

 fires have now exterminated these prime characteristic scrub 

 plants. 

 1/ Lechea Deckertii Small, sp. nov. Plants 0.5-1.5 dm. tall, 

 yellowish-green: flowering stems erect, bushy-branched, minutely 

 appressed-pubescent, brown, the branchlets slender-wiry or 

 almost filiform, evenly scarred with leaf-bases: leaves of the 

 branchlets, linear to linear-subulate, 1.5-2.5 mm. long, acutish, 

 glabrous, sessile: bracts of the inflorescence similar to the leaves, 

 but smaller: flowers relatively few: pedicels about i mm. long, 

 reddish, glabrous, mostly spreading at maturity: sepals of two 

 kinds, green, the two outer ones about 0.5 mm. long, acute, the 

 three inner, oval, nearly i mm. long, concave, obtuse, persistent 

 for a time, but deciduous when the fruit is fully mature: petals 

 oval or suborbicular, about as long as the inner sepals, obtuse, 

 reddish: filaments slender-filiform, about 1.5 mm. long: anthers 

 subglobose, about 0.2 mm, long: capsule subglobose, 1.2-1.3 

 mm. in diameter, glabrous, shining, exceeding the sepals. — 

 Scrub, Miami (N. W. 64th Street), formerly Lemon City. 



Specimens of this pinweed were first found by the writer 

 on December 18, 1921, but without flowers or fruits. The 

 locality was visited again last winter and early this spring (1926) 

 but the plants were only in leaf. Early in June Mr. Richard F. 

 Deckert — for whom the species is named — collected specimens 

 in flower and by the last week in June sent in specimens in fruit. 



