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there 30 small trees of the Lavatera, and in another place a feu- 

 bushes, and proceeds to describe how the plant differs from 

 that in culti%ation. Many years later, finding also differences in 

 the fruit, he described the San Miguel race as Saviniona den- 

 droidea. It is now wholly extinct, but as the matter stands, it 

 presumably represents an insular subspecies, Lavatera assiir- 

 gentiflora dendroidea. With regard to the other four names 

 offered by Greene, the case is not so clear. Saviniona Clementina, 

 from San Clemente, was based on a single tree, S. reticulata 

 from Catalina also on one plant. Although Greene makes a 

 point of the forms of Saviniona (which was founded for a species 

 of the Canary Islands) being all insular, he actually describes 

 5. suspensa from San Diego, and supposes the original plant of 

 Kellogg to have come from the mainland of California, some- 

 where near San Francisco. In favor of the view that the forms 

 on the several islands may be, or may have been, distinct, is the 

 fact that Watson described three endemic species from the 

 Mexican islands southward. 



Another puzzling case is that of the Tree-poppies, Dendro- 

 mecon, beautiful shrubs with yellow flowers. Munz accepts the 

 insular representative, .0. //ar/ort/w Kellogg, as a valid species, 

 and adds the remark: "variable and needing study." Greene 

 (Pittonia Vol. 5) recognized five supposed species, the original 

 D. Harfordii from Santa Rosa, D. flexilis from Santa Cruz, 

 D. densifolia from Santa Rosa, D. rhamnoides from San Cle- 

 mente, and D. arborea from Santa Catalina. These are all 

 separated by stated characters, and presented in a table. But 

 evidently Greene's material was insufificient, and it will be 

 necessary to study the variation of the plants where they grow. 

 Miss Alice Eastwood, in a letter just received, refers to "the 

 great variability that insular floras always present." Millspaugh 

 and Nuttall have repeatedly referred to the same phenomena 

 in their account of Santa Catalina. \'ariability is often as- 

 cribed to crossing, which should be reduced to a minimum in 

 the restricted floras of islands. Thus Opuntia littoralis, in its 

 pure stands on the islands, appear very uniform; but on the 

 mainland it crosses with other species, and confusion results. 

 Astragalus miguelensis and Erysimum insulare, as I saw them 

 on San Miguel, seemed to me very constant in their characters; 

 so also Malacothrix implicata Eastwood, common along the 

 cliffs by the sea, except that the rays were sometimes entirely 



