STUDIES OF thai,ictraceae; — I. 59 



Thai^icTrum perELEGANS. a yard high, or taller, the 

 green and somewhat polished stem finely striate above the 

 middle, glabrous, very leafy up to the rather naked and not 

 ample panicle ; leaves large, none but the uppermost sessile, 

 all of thin and delicate texture ; outline of terminal leaflets 

 broadly to rather narrowly obovate, obtuse at both ends, with 

 three rounded lobes at summit, the large middle one notably 

 mucronate, laterals often only smaller, but sometimes obliquely 

 oval and entire, all of a deep blue-green above, very pale 

 beneath and there bearing traces of a minute scattered pubes- 

 cence, also rather prominently venulose : sepals of the more 

 fertile plant orbicular, white, of the more infertile larger, 

 somewhat elongated : filaments very long, also very gradually 

 clavellate from near the base and not wider than the very 

 short oval or oval-oblong anthers : achenes rather small, 

 elliptical, black in maturity, all deflexed, those of the more 

 fertile plant ver3' shortly stipitate, of the more staminate on a 

 very long filiform stipe. 



A large but elegant species, known to me only as in my 

 own herbarium, and as collected by my friend Thos. H. 

 Kearney, at Lemon's Gap in the mountains of eastern 

 Tennessee, in early September, 1897. Strictly of the white- 

 stamened group, only the carpels blacken in drying, all other 

 parts retaining perfectly their fine blue-green coloring. The 

 deflexed attitude of the achenes is not so remarkable as is the 

 fact that the about four of them that are in each bisexual flower 

 are very conspicuously and slenderly stipitate. I judge this 

 to be a woodland species ; but the labels bear no notes of 

 habitat. 



ThalicTrum hepaticum. Stem tall, terete without striae, 

 smooth, glabrous, purplish, without bloom ; lowest leaves 

 very large, a foot long and of somewhat greater breadth, of 

 120 to 140 rather small mostly deeply and subequally 3-lobed 

 leaflets that are bright green above, glaucescent beneath and 

 glabrous throughout, firm of texture and not revolute ; termi- 

 nals hardly an inch wide, of the same length, subcordate. 



