2o6 The West American Scientist. 



EXTENDED RANGE OF SOME CALIFORNIAN 



PLANTS. 



Since the publication, seven years ago, of the second volume of 

 the Botany of the State Survey, with its valuable supplements, no 

 regular account is kept, in any journal, of the re- discovery of rare 

 or long lost species, or of the extending range of such as were 

 formerly believed to be somevvhat local. Yet notes of this kind, 

 always giving light upon the highly interesting subject of plant 

 distribution, are very important to be preserved. A few such are 

 here offered. 



In a small parcel of specimens collected this year in the upper 

 part of Monterey County, by R^v. J. B. Hickman, and sent to me 

 for identification, I find the following worthy of mention. 

 Lupinus luteolus, (Kellogg) not before reported from any point 

 south of the Napa and Sacramento valleys; Eriogonum trichopo- 

 dum, (Torrey) a species belonging to Arizona and New Mexico, 

 also the deserts of south-eastern California, and now. in San Benito 

 Co., just east of Monterey, at least three hundred miles distant 

 from any other recorded habitat of the species: Phacelia viscida, 

 (Torrey) and Euphorbia histula, (Engelm), both hertofore sup- 

 posed to be restricted to regions south of Point Conception; Pha- 

 celia circinatiformis, (Gray) a plant so rare that no one has seen 

 it, until now; since Douglas' time, and he must hpve obtained it 

 in this same region in 1831 or '32. This is, indeed, a mo t note- 

 worthy re discovery. Mr. Lemmon obtained this year Eschscholt- 

 zia rhombipetala, (Greene) in San Luis Co.^ at least one hundred 

 miles below its recorded habitat, i. e., the plains of the lower San 

 Joaquin. The rare Eriogonum dasyanthemum, (Torrey & Gray) 

 has lately been found plentiful in the vicinity of Vacaville, in the 

 lower Sacramento, region by Messrs Philip Woolsey and Willis 

 Jepson, while Mr. V. K. Chestnut has brought specimens of 

 HemizonicL Heermanni, (Greene) from near tlie summit of Mt. 

 Diablo, very far to the northward of the original Kern Co. local- 

 ity. The rare Ranunculus canus. (Bentham) re-discovered a year 

 or two since by Mrs. Bidwell at Chico, I lound this year, in a 

 fine state, considerably better answering to the requirements of 

 Bentham's description, on hills near Antioch. In this locality 

 only, and it must be approximately the original one of Hartweg, 

 has the foliage of the plant all that abundance of gray, or whitish 

 silky pubescence which suggested the name of the species. The 

 Chico plant is, in this respect, less unlike R. Deppei, (Nuttall) or 

 what has wrongly been called R. Californicus. 



In our standard treatise on Californian botany above referred 

 to, the note on Stachys Chamissonis, (Bentham) is this: **Wet 

 grounds; common around San Francisco Bay." I have wondered 

 that, in all my years of botanizing in the familiar region named, I 

 could never meet with this plant. It is common enough in its 



