CERTAIN MALTACEOUS TTPES. 206 



authors have done for Caesalpino, Colunma, Eay, Tournef ort, Lin- 

 naeus, and then stop — that is to really honor a man, while to use 

 his name as a merely convenient foundation for the making of 

 a dozen different names — is not that to openly dishonor him ? 

 I respectfully commend this topic to the serious consideration 

 of the next International Congress of Botanists. 



Certain rialvaeous Types. 



The very many herbs and shrubs of far-western and south- 

 western North America that have been distributed between 

 Sphaeralcea and Malvastrum are much in need of recension. Of 

 this I have long been convinced; the conviction having come 

 from a long study of the various types in their native soil ; a 

 much more prolonged acquaintance with them in this way than 

 any other botanist ever has enjoyed. 



The essential characters, no less than the strong habital pecu- 

 liarities of several groups, have long been fixed in my mind ; 

 but I can not yet satisfy myself as to whether we have or have 

 not a single species of real Sphaeralcea or a genuine Malvastrum 

 in all North America. If these are wanting here, then we have 

 at least two more North American genera of Malvaceae that 

 remain undefined over and above those herein proposed. 



Those that with us have been called Sphaeralcea species are 

 of two ecologic groups, one of the arid districts of the far South- 

 west, companions of the Cactaceae, and geographically coexten- 

 sive as a group, with that family, and the desert Sal solaceae. It is 

 in this assemblage only that we find species with the habit of typ- 

 ical South American Sphaeralcea. That any of them have the 

 floral or carpological characters of that genus is what I can not yet 

 determine. 



As widely different from this group in habit as can be, and also 

 of totally different habitat, are the types of a few northwestern 

 plants, at first called Malva species, but after that transferred 

 to Sphaeralcea. The habitat of these is the banks or borders 

 of mountain streams or other very moist places at consider- 



