Igo TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.—SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER. 
“Flora Boreali-Americana,” wherein he described and named it 
as Towrsendia, Its general appearance leads one to suspect 
some difference from Aster; and the globular involucre (Fig. 2) 
strikes us at once when we go into details, as in Aster it is ovoid 
or oblong. Scme authors note a difference in the relative length 
of the pappus in the ray and disk florets, it being shorter in the 
latter. Dr. Masters, in the “Treasury of Botany,” says of Zowyz- 
sendia, “the fruits are hairy, and the pappus is in one row, scaly 
in the outer, hairy in the inner fruits.” The difference in the 
pappus seems to be the great point of comparison. Sir W. J. 
Hooker says, in the work referred to: “This highly interesting 
plant, no less on account of its habit than its pappus, deserves 
to be separated from As¢er, of which it was by Richardson con- 
sidered a doubtful species.” When speaking of the pappus par- 
ticularly he says: “ Pappus of the ray composed of several unequal 
subulate bristles much shorter than the achenium, and one or 
two long ones nearly resembling those of the disk flowers.” In 
regard to this matter of the pappus Nuttall says, in the “Ameri- 
can Philosophical Society’s Transactions” for 1834-35, “Achenium 
obovate, margined, and flatly depressed, sericeous (silky) with a 
numerous connate series of white silky pappus almost plumose, 
barbellate, and remarkably attenuated above. 
We have thought it important to call the collector's attention 
to what these different authors say of the pappus (the silky hair 
coming up from the tip of the seed at # in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4), 
because it will be seen that though there is something evidently 
distinct in its characters from Aséer, no two of the writers exactly 
agree, and our Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 would scarcely be recognized 
as coming under the description of any one. The bristles “much 
do not show at all; rather, instead 
” 
’ 
shorter than the achenium’ 
of “one or two” being long in the ray flower (Fig. 3), they are 
all “resembling those of the disk” (Fig. 4); being but little 
shorter. Our drawing was made from a Colorado specimen, 
kindly furnished by Prof. Sargent, of the Cambridge Botanical 
Garden, but the same character as figured in our plate exists in 
