SEGREGATES FROM ASTER. 5 



being prismatic rather than compressed, and the latter much 

 too fine and soft. As a genus, Oclembna bears much the same 

 relation to Aster which Erechtiies bears to Senecio. 



I am also now persuaded that the genus is not monotypical, 

 and would name as a second species 0. nemoralis, this being 

 of course the Aster nemoralis, Ait., which, seeing it was no 

 Aster, I formerly transferred to Bucephalus, where it was not 

 well at home. It has the same habit, and the same reproduction 

 by tubers which the type species portrays, though its pappus is 

 firmer, and its achenes, though 5 -angled, are a little compressed. 

 Whether its heads are nodding before expansion or erect I do not 

 know, never yet having had the fortune of seeing the plant 

 alive. That in the type species the heads are nodding before 

 expansion has now at last been announced by Mr. Small in his 

 new book already famous. 



The genus Virgaria proposed by Kafinesque I have wished 

 for years to be able so to extend as to include in it Aster sericeus 

 and its allies. They are all wiry and coriaceous things as to 

 texture, with silvery-silky foliage and peculiarly foliaceous 

 involucres — plants abundantly distinct from the type of Aster. 

 But Virgaria concolor, Eaf., stands apart from the others in 

 several particulars. Its mode of growth and propagation 

 underground, its inflorescence and its flowers — those of the disk 

 being never yellow, but at first white, then rich purple — and 

 then its silky villous achenes, all combined bespeak its title to 

 the rank of a genus from which its kindred of the west and 

 south must needs be separated. 



To them I accord generic rank under the name Lasallea. 

 Their heads are large and solitary; their disk-corollas at 

 first yellow, then becoming brown ; their achenes perfectly 

 glabrous. The species seem to be about three: L. sbricea 

 (Vent, under Aster), L. Nuttallii {Aster montanus. Nutt. not 

 of AUioni) and L. phyllolbpis (T. & G. under Aster). 



When in 1896 I was studying Dmllingeria (Pitt. iii. 50) as a 

 necessary segregate from the Linnsean Aster, I would fain have 

 made positive Nees' doubtful placing of Aster ptarmicoides in 



