TOWNSENDIA SERICEA.—SILKY TOWNSEND FLOWER. Igl 
dried natural specimens. We were at first disposed to regard 
this development of the pappus in the ray flowers abnormal in 
this respect,—but it may be noted that in Mr. Watson’s Botany 
of King’s Expedition, a species 7. scapfigera is figured, in which 
also there seems nothing but a little difference in length to dis- 
tinguish the pappus of the disk from that of the ray. 
Our plant would probably be regarded as the same with that 
described in the “ Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club,” vol. 6, 
p.163,as 7. Wilcoxtana, by Prof. Wood, who says of it, “ pappus 
alike in the ray and the disc florets, consisting of about thirty 
white bristles,’ and he remarks that it is confounded in Herba- 
riums with 7. sericea. Since the discovery of the species we 
now describe by the Franklin expedition, so many new forms 
have been found from the Arctics to New Mexico, and so nearly 
like each other, that botanists are almost afraid to name and 
describe them as new species, and, therefore, we have thought it 
might help the student, by dwelling on this point relative to the 
pappus, to prepare him to look for probable variations. 
Among the interesting points connected with our plant is one 
quoted by Hooker in regard to the time when the buds are 
formed. In most composite plants these are developed after the 
growth of the leaves in the spring; Sir W. J. Hooker says “the 
bud is formed in the autumn,” and what Dr. Richardson further 
observed in the living plant I find to be characteristic of all the 
specimens in this collection, that “ the florets of the ray are mostly 
involute, rarely expanded, and always narrow, nearly of the same 
color with the pappus and inconspicuous; the flowers indeed 
never fully expanding,” in which again the student will see some 
differences in our plate. 
Though with apparently so wide a distribution through the 
centre of our territory, it does not seem to be often met with by 
collectors. It was found by Nuttall, in 1834, when on the Wyeth 
expedition, he says ‘on the Black Hills towards the source of the 
Platte in latitude 41°, Flowering in April and May probably, as, 
according to Dr. Richardson, the flower is formed in the autumn 
