92 Contributions from the Gray Herbarium 
(U.8.); Carmen Island, 1890, Palmer 828 (G., K., U. S.).—T. 1. 
Fig. 4. 
The variations in this species are so great as to deserve detailed 
mention (see t. 1). The megaphyllous extreme, var. tastensis 
(fig. 6), is a stoutish shrub with triangular-ovate toothed leaves 
(10 by 6.7 cm.) tapering almost from the truncate base to apex, 
above light green and shagreen-like with a tuberculate pubescence, 
beneath venose, rather softly and in youth subcanescently pubes- 
cent with rather short hairs. This passes into a form (fig. 3) with 
darker olive-green leaves (averaging about 6 by 4.5 cm.) with 
fewer teeth, even harsher and denser pubescence above (of finer 
hairs) and somewhat soft or rather harsh pubescence beneath, 
which is nomenclatorially the typical form of the species. On the 
one hand, as it goes northward into California and Arizona, and 
thence into adjacent Sonora, this passes by a reduction in size of 
the leaves accompanied by an increase in their dentation and 
harshness, associated with increased scabrosity of stems and pedun- 
cles and elongation of the herbaceous tips of the phyllaries, into the 
var. Parishii (fig. 2), through gradations so measured that it is 
difficult to draw any definite line of demarcation; on the other, 
variations in the direction of reduced and entire leaves and ap- 
pressed and somewhat softer pubescence, with reduction in size 
of the tubercles on the upper surface of the leaves and increased 
development of the hairs, lead through such specimens as Purpus 
219, Nelson & Goldman 7155, and Palmer 30 (1890) to var. Town- 
sendvt (fig. 5) of Socorro Island. In this variety the leaves beneath 
are either densely and rather softly pubescent with spreading hairs 
or in the thinner-leaved individuals less densely pubescent with 
appressed hairs. Intermediate between this and var. chenopodina 
is Palmer 828 (1890) from Carmen Island, with thicker leaves dark 
green above and canescently strigillose beneath. On the whole 
this is nearer to var. chenopodina, to-which it is here referred. 
Through Rose 16200 it connects directly with the type of V. cheno- 
podina (fig. 4), a plant which in aspect, aside from the panicled 
heads, is very close to V. brevifolia. In Greene’s type the leaves 
are small (1.5-2.3 by 1-1.7 em.), entire, thick, and blunt, and 
densely canescent-strigillose on both sides, and the whole char- 
acter of the plant is so unlike that of var. tastensis that when 
the two sheets are laid side by side their specific identity seems 
