BRIEFER ARTICLES 
' ANELSONIA, A NEW GENUS OF THE CRUCIFERAE 
As GREENE remarked long ago, the so-called natural families, as 
Umbelliferae, Labiatae, and Cruciferae, contain relatively few natural 
genera, and perhaps in no group of plants are generic limitations harder 
to define than within some sections of the Cruciferae. Consequently, 
there have often been included under one generic name plants that in 
point of fact bear little real relationship to one another. The genus 
Parrya, as it has been treated by many recent authors, furnishes, we 
believe, an example of this pisinin pretation - generic Henitaticms, 
This genus was drawn by Brown toi 
of the far North, all characterized by showy purple- red flowers and 
glabrous (or hirtellous with simple hairs) foliage. In 1891 GREENE 
(Fl. Fran. 1:253) referred to Parrya, Hesperis Mensziesii Hook., a plant 
previously made the type of a new genus by NuTTALL (T. and G., 
Fl. N. Amer. 1:89. 1838) under the name Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides 
Nutt., and possessing much the same aspect as the species included by 
Brown in his genus, but with the foliage whitened by a thick covering 
of branching and stellate hairs. A onofthis 
plant with the typical members of Parrya has disclosed the fact, however, cS 
that technical but readily discernible differences other than the char- __ 
acter of the pubescence exist between Parrya and Phoenicaulis. _ 
more important of these are the lack in the latter of the conspicuous — 
network of superimposed fibers that characterize the septum of sn 
the absence of the loose epidermis so } omi t the seeds of the 
latter genus, the tort : 
species of Parrya, and the ea 
of characters of this type bm thee | ‘proper delineation of — in the i 
