342 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [APRIL 
* IPOMEA HIRSUTULA Jacq. Eclog. Pl. Rar. 1:63. 1811.—In an 
orange grove at Riverside, Gordon Surr, December 1915. In 
Davinson’s List of Los Angeles County Plants (1892), he includes 
this plant under the synonym J. mexicana Gray, but in a subsequent 
list published in 1896 he substitutes 7. purpurea Lam., a common 
and often troublesome weed in southern California. The above is 
the only, and certainly an erroneous, previous report of the present 
species in the state. 
CUCURBITA CALIFORNICA Torr. ex Wats. Proc. Amer. Acad. 2: 
138. 1876.—The type of this species is said to have been collected 
“at some locality in Sacramento Valley” by Dr. E. Pickering on 
the Wilkes Exploring Expedition in 1841; and in the Botany of 
California (2:40) it is added that a plant “apparently the same” 
was collected at Carrizo Creek, in the Colorado Desert, by Emory, 
evidently on the Mexican Boundary Survey in 1852. Nothing 
further was heard of the plant until August 1882, when the writer 
found a few individuals growing in sandy soil at Redlands, all of 
which were destroyed in a few years by the advance of cultivation. 
Material from this collection was described by PARRY in Bull. Torr. 
Bot. Club 10:50, with a cut of a leaf and section of the fruit. 
Parry was the first to point out the real distinguishing characters 
of the species, for Watson’s two lines of description is scarcely 
improved by him in the Botany of California, and neither of them 
suffices to discriminate this from C. palmata Wats., a frequent 
species of the southern California deserts, found also in some cis- 
montane parts of San Diego and Riverside counties, and even 
reported to reach San Joaquin County in the central California 
area. ‘The two species are very similar in their general aspect; in 
fact, on cursory inspection, they might readily be confounded when 
not in fruit, which may account for the few collections of the raret 
species. C. californica, however, is readily recognizable at all times 
by the harsher hispidity of its leaves; but the best character is 
found in the hispid ovary, and especially in the hispid fruit, which 
has a thin, soft rind, becoming ashy gray in color and rugosely 
shrunken at maturity. The “smaller size and diminutive foliage” 
ascribed to the plant in the description can be found in individuals 
of either species. To the above stations may now be added: 
