28 memoirs from the department of botany of columbia college. 



[Plate 1.] 

 I. Polygonum bistortoides Pursh. 



Polygonum Bisforta Chamisso & Schlechtendal, Linnaea, 3 : 37 (1828), not Linnaeus; 

 Hooker, Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 130; Meisner in DC. Prodr. 14: 125; S. Watson, Bot. King's 

 Exp. 317, Bot. Calif. 2: 14; Porter & Coulter, Syn. Fl. Col. 123; Coulter, Man. Bot. 

 Rocky Mt. Reg. 320; Greene, Fl. Francis. 137. 



Polygonum bistortoides Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. 271 (1814); Meisner, Monog. 51; Eaton 

 & Wright, N. A. Bot. Ed. 8, 367. 



Polygonum Bistorta var. oblongifolium Meisner in DC. Prodr. 14: 126 (1856); Porter 

 & Coulter, Syn. Fl. Col. 124. 



Perennial, glabrous or sometimes with a fine hispidulous pubescence on the under 

 surface of the leaves, more or less glaucous throughout. Rootstock enlarged, fleshy, 

 creeping or horizontal, chaffy with the remains of modified ocreae ; stem erect or assurgent, 

 2.5-7 dm. long, slender, simple; radical leaves oblong-lanceolate, oblong or oblanceolate, 

 10-25 cm. long, .5-3 cm. broad, acute or obtusish, acuminate at the base; the mid-rib 

 rather broad and conspicuous on both sides ; petioles 5-20 cm. long ; cauline leaves mostly 

 narrowly lanceolate, 3-15 cm. long, sessile (except some of the lower Ones), subcordate or 

 cordate, arising from near the summit of the ocreae, all often revolute and conspicuously 

 nerved ; ocreae narrowly cylindric, 4-8 cm. long, entire or somewhat broken about the 

 more or less expanded obliquely opened summit, clasping the stem closely, sometimes 

 spht from the attachment of the leaf to the base ; inflorescence consisting of a single ter- 

 minal spicate raceme; raceme oblong, 1-6 cm. long, 1-1.5 cm. broad, densely flowered; 

 ocreolae lanceolate or oblong, 3-6 mm. long, acuminate, toothed, strongly one-ribbed; 

 pedicels slender, 3-7 mm. long, articulated at the base of the calyx ; • calyx about 4 mm. 

 long, colored, varying from light rose color to white, five-parted nearly to the base, the 

 segments oblong, faintly nerved ; stamens eight, exserted ; style three-parted nearly to 

 the base, 3-4 mm. long, exserted; achene triquetrous, 3.5-4 mm. long, rhombic obovoid, 

 narrowed at the base, light brown, smooth and shining. 



Alpine and subalpine parts of the mountains of Colorado, Arizona and California, 

 northward to the arctic regions. 



