60 FRANKENIACE.E. Krameria. 



or somewhat woody perennial herbs, silky-tomentose and often prostrate ; with 



alternate and entire narrow leaves ; flowers solitary, on axillary bracted peduncles, 



purplish. 



A genus of about a dozen species, confined to the warmer portions of America, three or four 

 indigenous on the southern border of the United States. 



1. K. parvifolia, Benth. A rigid diffusely branched shrub, 1 or 2 feet high, 

 with silky appressed pubescence, the slender divaricate branchlets often spinose : 

 leaves linear, 4 to 8 lines long ; the lower obtuse (often small and ovate to oblong), 

 the upper aculeately tipped and, with the inflorescence, usually sprinkled with short 

 rigid gland-bearing hairs : flowers 2 to 4 lines long ; peduncles with 2 or 3 pairs of 

 leaf-like bracts : the ovate silky sepals purple within : petals with claws united 

 nearly to the top, the middle blade narrow : stamens nearly free : fruit with numer- 

 ous very slender prickles retrorsely barbed their whole length, cordate-globose, 4 

 lines long, shortly acuminate, obscurely ridged on each side. — Bot. Sulph. 6, t. 2 ; 

 Gray, PL Wright, i. 41 ; Berg, Bot. Zeit. xiv. 766. 



From San Diego (Cleveland) to Fort Mohave (Cuopcr) and Sonora (Thurbcr), and eastward to 

 New Mexico ; southward on the coast to Magdalena Bay. 



2. K. canescens, Gray. Very similar in habit and foliage : pubescence short 

 and tomentose : leaves lanceolate to linear : peduncles shorter, 2-bracted : sepals 

 lanceolate, the smaller one linear : capsule ovate-globose, tipped with the stout 

 curved style, and armed with slender prickles barbed at the apex. — PL Wright, i. 

 42 j Torr. Bot. Mex. Bound. 49, t. 13. 



" Desert west of the Colorado " (AnfiselT), and New Mexico. 



K. lanceolata, Torr., is a more eastern species, from Tucson, Arizona (Palmer), to Florida. 

 It is silky-villous, with 2-bracted peduncles, the fruit armed with stout and straight retrorsely 

 scabrous spines. 



Order XIII. FRANKENIACE^. 



Low perennial herbs or undershrubs, with opposite entire leaves and no stipules ; 

 distinguished from the first tribe of the following order mainly by the parietal pla- 

 centae, and oval or oblong anatropous seeds with a straight embryo ; — of a single 

 genus. 



1. FRANKENIA, Linn. 



Calyx tubular or prismatic, furrowed ; the 4 or 5 lobes valvate and induplicate 

 in the bud. Petals 4 or 5, hypogynous ; the blade tapering into a claw, which 

 bears an appendage (crown) on its inner face. Stamens 4 to 7 or rarely more, hypo- 

 gynous. Ovary 1 -celled, with 2 to 4 few- to several-ovuled parietal placentae : style 

 2 - 4-cleft into filiform divisions : stigmas unilateral. Capsule included in the per- 

 sistent calyx, 2 - 4-valved ; the few or several seeds attached by filiform stalks to 

 the margin of the valves. — Leaves small, mostly crowded and also fascicled in the 

 axils, sessile or nearly so, the pair often united by a membranous somewhat sheath- 

 ing base : flowers small, perfect, solitary and sessile in the forks of the stem, or by • 

 the reduction of the upper leaves to bracts becoming cymose-clustered on the 

 branches : corolla pink or purplish. 



A widely diffused genus, of 30 or more species, only three of them North American, and these 

 all southwestern. 



1. F. gran difolia, Cham. & Schlecht. Smooth or somewhat pubescent with 

 short spreading hairs, rather woody at base, erect or prostrate, 6 inches high, leafy : 



