Erigeron. COMPOSITE. 207 



A. parviflorUS, Ghat. Glabrous, somewhat viscid, low and slender : leaves narrow, sim- 

 ply pinnatifid, barely inch long ; the lobes short-linear, obtuse, hardly mucronate : heads 3 

 or 4 lines high: involucre closer; the bracts with short oblong or ovate-lanceolate acute 

 green tips: rays 3 lines long: akenes canescently sericeous. — Bot. Calif, i. 322, note. 

 Macheeranthera parviflora, Gray, PI. Wright, i. 90. — New Mexico from the Eio Grande to 

 W. Arizona, Wright, Thurber, &c. 



49. ERlG-ERON, L. Fleabane. (*Hp and yiputv, old man in spring.) 

 — A rather large genus of herbs or barely suffrutescent plants, verging on the 

 one hand to Aster, on the other to Conyza, and only arbitrarily to be separated 

 on the lines of junction ; the heads disposed to be solitary and long-pedunculate ; 

 rays (occasionally absent in certain species, uniformly wanting in two or three 

 others) violet, purple, white, rarely ochroleucous (or in anomalous species even 

 clear yellow !) ; disk-flowers yellow, not changing to purple : akenes commonly 

 2-nerved. — L. Gen. ed. 2, 400 (Erigerum in ed. 1, after Dodoens, who had 

 Groundsel in view, and this form may explain how the name was taken for 

 neuter by Linnasus) ; Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 166; Benth. & Hook. Gen. ii. 280, 

 excl. § Oritrophiwm (which must belong either to Celmisia or Aster) ; Gray, Proc. 

 Am. Acad. xvi. 86. Erigeron, Trimorphcea, Phalacroloma, Stenactis, &c, Cass. 

 Erigeron, Stenactis, Phalacroloma, Polyactidium (Polyactis, Less.), Heterochceta, 

 & Woodvillea, DC. Prodr. (Genera founded on the pappus and number of the 

 rays, mostly unavailable even for good subgenera.) The series here commences 

 with Asteroid and ends in Conyzoid forms. 



§ 1. Eueeigeeon. Rays elongated and conspicuous, or in a few species uni- 

 formly wanting, in one or two (J2. compositus, E. concinnus) occasionally abor- 

 tive : no rayless female flowers between the proper ray and disk. 



* Perennials, commonly dwarf from a multicipital caudex, alpine or rarely alpestrine, with com- 

 paratively large and mostly solitary heads: involucre loose or spreading, and copiously lanate 

 with long multiseptate hairs: rays about 100, narrow: leaves entire. 



+- Whole herbage gnaphalioid-lanate : pappus double ; the short outer multisquamellate. 

 E. Mufrii, Geat. A span high, densely clothed with long and soft white (apparently per- 

 sistent) fioccose wool ; stems simple and monocephalous, rather leafy : leaves lanceolate-spat- 

 ulate (an inch or two long), or uppermost narrowly lanceolate : involucre squarrose, as of 

 the following species: rays white, a third of an inch long. — Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 210. — 

 Cape Thompson, Alaska, John Muir. 

 -f— -t— Herbage green, with or without villous or hirsute pubescence : pappus nearly simple. 



B. UniflorUS, L. Stems an inch to a span or two high, strictly monocephalous, few-leaved, 

 often naked and pedunculiform at summit: radical leaves spatulate or oblanceolate (inch or 

 two long) ; cauline lanceolate to linear : involucre usually hirsute as well as lanate, occa- 

 sionally becoming naked; the linear acute bracts rather close, or merely the short tips 

 spreading: rays purple or sometimes white, 2 or 3 or rarely 4 lines long. — Fl. Lapp. t. 9, 

 f. 3, & Spec. ii. 864; Hook. PI. ii. 17; Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 169; Ledeb. Fl. Boss. ii. 490; 

 Eeichenb. Ic. Fl. Germ. xvi. 914. E. alpinus & Hieracium pusillum, Pursh, Fl. ii. 532, 502. 

 E. pulckettus, var., & E. alpinus, in part, DC. Prodr. v. 287. E. eriocephalus, J. Vahl, PI. Dan. 

 t. 2298, is either this or possibly a form of the next. — Labrador to Arctic coast, and 

 Unalaska, south to the Sierra Nevada, California, and mountains of Colorado, in the alpine 

 region. Forms with a comparatively hirsute involucre occur in the Rocky Mountains ; and 

 some are not well distinguished from the next. (Greenland, Eu., N. Asia to Kamts.) 



B. lanatus, Hook. Stems about a span high from a multicipital caudex, scapiform or few- 

 leaved, monocephalous : radical leaves spatulate to obovate, about half-inch long, tapering into 

 a narrowed base or into a slender margined petiole ; some primary ones occasionally pal- 

 mately 3-lobed; cauline one or two, small and linear, or hardly any; head not larger than 



