260 ASPEKIFOLI^!. 



t 



ovate, little more than % line long, brownish and' dull, carinate ventrally 

 only, the keel and scar closely approached, but not covered by the lateral 

 angles, the obtuse rugse of the back running into more or less favose 

 meshes among the numerous minute granulations: scar linear, short. — 

 Common in wet grassy land among the Mission Hills, and in Marin Oo. 



4. PLA.GIOBOTHRYS, Fisch. & Mey. Bather large but slender 

 annuals with most of their leaves in a close radical tuft. Bacemes 

 spike-like, elongated, loose, naked or leafy-bracted; pedicels very short, 

 filiform, persistent. Calyx 5-cleft or -parted, closed or campanulate, 

 more or less accrescent in fruit, and when not too deeply cleft irregularly 

 circumscissile near the base. Nutlets ovate or indistinctly cruciform in 

 outline, carinate on both sides toward the apex, usually with well defined 

 lateral margins, the back very regularly transversely rugose, smooth or 

 roughened between the rugae; insertion almost medial on a depressed 

 gynobase; areola or scar rounded, hollow or solid. 



* Stems branched from the base, the branches prostrate. 



1. P. canescens, Benth. Canescent with a pale soft-villous pubes- 

 cence, the branches % — IK ft- long, leafy and floriferous throughout: 

 calyx thinnish, cleft to the middle, the tube slightly inflated in age, and 

 the segments closed over the incurved-connivenl nutlets; these with strong 

 transverse rugae and minute intervening granulation. — Plains and hills 

 of Alameda and Santa Clara counties, and thence both northward and 

 southward, in the interior. April, May. 



* * Stems erect from the base, loosely branching above. 



2. P. not lioful vus, Gray. Stem mostly solitary from the depressed 

 leaf -tuft, 1 — 1% ft. high including the widely spreading flowering 

 branches; herbage canescent with a short and fine pubescence: calyx 

 small, cleft hardly to the middle, its teeth closed over the fruit, but the 

 whole calyx, except the very base, at length deciduous by circumcision, 

 exposing and releasing the ripe nutlets; these cruciform-ovate, with 

 rather prominent rugae, and dot-like white granulations intervening. — 

 Very common on hills. March — May. 



3. P. tenellus (Nutt.), Gray. Small and slender, seldom 10 in. high, 

 soft-hirsute and canescent, the calyx rusty-yellowish, the erect stems 

 with one or more small leaves: spikes rather few-flowered: calyx deeply 

 cleft, not circumscissile, loosely connivent over the shining somewhat 

 cruciform nutlets;, these a line long, smooth and glassy, with very straight 

 transverse rugse which are either smooth or quite strongly muricate. — 

 Very common in our northerly hilly districts. April, May. 



4. P. campestris, Greene. Stouter than any of the preceding, 1 — 2}*; 

 ft. high, scarcely canescent, but hirsute, the calyx with a brownish 

 pubescence, cleft nearly to the base, the segments wholly herbaceous, per- 



