Macbride — North American Spermatophytes 53 
species that occurs in the Northwest. Gulia virgata is the next 
species in Brand’s treatment and his lack of knowledge as to the 
true character of this plant has been shown above. His separation 
of the var. floccosa as a subspecies, based on the degree of bract- 
development in relation to the inflorescence appears to be a highly 
artificial distinction which, moreover, does not work out satis- 
factorily. The real points of difference between G. virgata and the 
var. floccosa have been indicated by Miss Milliken, Univ. Cal. 
Publ. Bot. 1. 40 (1904). But the principal point at issue here, as 
in the case of G. densifolia, concerns the character of the collection 
upon which the species was based. Unfortunately in this instance 
the problem is doubly perplexing because Gray did not indicate a 
specific collection in describing G. floccosa, Proc. Am. Acad. viii. 
272 (1870) but merely designated the range, “California to Arizona, 
interior of Oregon:and Utah.’ However, it is possible to gain 
a very accurate conception of the plant to which Dr. Gray meant 
this name to apply since at that time (1870) he had relatively few 
specimens and those that he referred to this species are so labeled 
in his own hand. In this connection I would mention that the 
stickler for technicalities will doubtless refuse to accept the name 
G. floccosa for the blue-flowered plant Gray really applied it to, 
because Gray, as shown by the context, thought he was giving a 
new name to G. lutea, this name being inappropriate because the 
flowers were not yellow. Later, in the Syn. FI. ii. pt. 1. 143 (1878) 
he corrects this mistaken idea in regard to G. lutea and retains the 
name G. floccosa for the blue-flowered plant he at one time con- 
sidered identical with G. lutea. The meagre material Gray had is 
satisfactory explanation for this confusion of these species, since 
the dried flowers of G. lutea give no proof of having been yellow 
and the habit and vegetative characters of the two species are very 
similar. Since then, as indicated by his annotations in the her- 
barium, he applied the name G. floccosa in large part to the plant 
with blue flowers rather than to the yellow-flowered species, in the 
real sense unknown to him, the adoption of the name for the former 
species is surely proper. And those specimens which were before 
him in 1870 and are labeled ‘“‘ G. floccosa”’ are not to be distin- 
guished from specimens cited by Brand as Navarretia virgata, var. 
dasyantha Brand and N. densifolia, var. jacumbana Brand, and 
which represent the two extremes of G. floccosa in the development 
of the corolla-tube in relation to its lobes. 
