CBETAIN' MALVA0B0U8 TYPES. jiiW 



texture, the larger 7 inches wide and as long, of orbicular out- 

 line, but with from 5 to 7 triangular lobes; these broadly, 

 obtusely but mucronulately dentate; calyx cleft into ovate- 

 acuminate lobes; corolla large, light rose-purple; seeds dis- 

 tinctly and not sparsely hispidulous. 



Inhabits an island in the Kankakee Eiver, Illinois, some 

 twelve or fifteen miles above the city of Kankakee and just 

 opposite a small village called Altorf ; this the only known 

 locality for this species. While by its dense pubescence it is next 

 of kin to the real /. acerifolia (excluding /. rivularis), it is speci- 

 fically distinct by characters of calyx and seed ; also as distinct 

 from all others by its remarkable habit, being a large and, bushy 

 plant, all its congeners being few-stemmed and often without a 

 branch. By the extreme distance intervening between the 

 habitat of this local plant of eastern Illinois and that of its 

 nearest congeners, which are of the Rocky Mountain region, any 

 well travelled American botanist would know that this plant 

 could not represent any Eocky Mountain species. The isolation 

 of it is so complete that one does not see how any " authority " 

 could readily have pronounced it to be referable to a Pacific 

 coast mountain species, even if it had not its two or three good 

 characters. ;. 



As far as the herbarium specimens here used are concerned, 

 they are all of my own collecting, at the place where Mr. Hill, 

 who first brought the plant to knowledge, colleeted his. The date 

 of my visit to the spot was 1 Aug., 1899. 



As consisting of a medley of incongruities, Malvastrum, as 

 received in N orth America hitherto, is more confused than 

 Sphaeralcea ; and that there exists so much as one real Mal- 

 vastrum north of the Mexican border I hold to be most doubtful. 

 I shall here indicate but two new genera of this aggregate. 

 The characters of one became clear to me a dozen years since, 

 when I had several of the species in cultivation at the Uni- 

 versity of California. All of them are shrubs, and with long 

 branches — in most species densely tomentose — usually 'flexu- 



