t^6 The West American Sciefiiist. 



arium ol the California Academy, have led to this identification of 

 the species, and to the displacement of the name M. borealis given 

 for it in the botany of the State Survey and in Rattan's Flora. 



Malva Nic^ensis, AUioni. 



This species, quite common about Berkeley, Oakland and Ala- 

 meda, has not been credited to the State or coast. It is a lower, 

 more hairy plant than the preceding, readily distinguished by its 

 half-inch long rose-purple corollas, calyx in fruit folded over the 

 carpels, instead of spreading away from them, and carpels obtuse- 

 ly and indistinctly wrinkled. It would be well for the botanical 

 readers of the Scientist in different parts of the State to look 

 after the mallows in their respective localities and see if this 

 species will not be found elsewhere than about the Bay. I may 

 add that Malva rotundifolia, so common in waste places on the 

 Atlantic coast, although it has been cultivated for years in the 

 University garden, has not yet escaped, though it doubtless will 

 eventually find itself naturahzed. 



Paronychia Chilensis, DC. 



Not having been privileged this season to make excursions to 

 remoter fields of botanical research, I have inspected more care- 

 fully some small tracts lying near home, with results that justify 

 the conclusion that even the streets of our metropolis are yet fair 

 botanizing ground. Here is a plant supposed hitherto to be 

 restricted to a coast of the southern hemisphere. It is by no 

 means a rare plant on grassy knolls about the Presidio in San 

 Francisco, where it is just as clearly and unquestionably indigen- 

 ous as is its relative, Pentacaena ramosissima, which, by the way, 

 is plentiful in the same and other localities. This Paronychia 

 bears a rather close resemblance to the Pentacsena, and is distin- 

 guished from it mainly by being a little puberulent, lacking the 

 spinose appendages of foliage and calyx, and thus being quite 

 innocuous to the touch. Its prostrate and matted branches are 

 from a few inches to a foot and a half long, and, to the eye of a 

 casual observer, might pass for those of a Polygonum of the 

 Avicularia or knot grass group. 



Thelypodium Lemmoni, Greene, n. sp. 



Robust and tall, 3-6 feet high, glabrous and slightly glaucous; 

 lower leaves 6-10 inches long, including the short petiole, 3 inches 

 broad, coarsely and angularly lobed below, repand-toothed above, 

 the uppermost nearly entire, of lanceolate outline, tapering to a 

 narrow base; racemes rather loose, afoot long; petals whitish, 3 

 lines long, exceeding the lilac-purple spreading sepals ; stamens 

 exserted ; pods ascending on peduncles of a line or more in 

 length, not stipitate, slender, somewhat torulose, more than 2 

 inches long, acuminate. 



