ROBINSON, — BOTANICAL NOTES. 327 
late obtusish scales. — Ic. iii. 41, t. 281; DC. Prodr. v. 677; Gray, 
yn. Fl. i. 303, including vars. semicalva and Caracasana of Pl. 
Wright. Bidens mercurialis folia, &c., Feuillée, Journ. Obs. Phys., 
&e. ii. 744, t. 32.— Generally distributed from New England to Ore- 
gon and southward to Mexico. : 
Var. nIsprpa, DC. Prodr. v. 677. Pubescence especially of the 
upper internodes more copious and not at all appressed: scales of the 
pappus in the disk flowers attenuate and bristle-tipped: foliage, etc. as 
in the type. Alleghany City, Pa.,9 August, 1869, Porter ; Milwaukee, 
Wisc., October, 1881, Sherman ; Providence, R. I. 5 July, 1892, 
Bailey § Collins ; Pittsburg, Pa., 1893, Clark; Cambridge, Mass., 
and doubtless widely introduced. The same thing has been recently 
collected in Central America by Capt. John Donnell Smith, nos. 759, 
2352, where it is doubtless indigenous. While in general readily 
distinguishable by the characters described, this variety occasionally 
so intergrades with the type that specific distinction seems very un- 
desirable, 
* * Rays purplish: pappus of the disk flowers but half as long as the achenes. 
G. nisprpa, Benth. Bot. Sulph. 119. The oldest name under the 
genus. G. brachystephana, Regel in Walper’s Rep. vi. 722. Varga- 
sta Caracasana, DC. Prodr. v. 676. Doubtfully established at Cam- 
den, N. J. 15 September, 1870, OC. F. Parker. So far as the northern 
and eastern parts of our country are concerned, all these plants are 
doubtless introduced; in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona forms of 
@. parviflora may well be indigenous, as Dr. Gray suggests. 
IV.— MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND NEW SPECIES. 
SILENE suBciLiaTa. Perennial: stem strict, terete, glabrous, a 
foot and a half high, enlarged at the nodes: leaves glaucous, slightly 
fleshy and finely lepidote, narrowly oblong to linear-oblanceolate, gla- 
brous on the surfaces but sparingly ciliated, 14-2 inches long, obtusely 
Pointed with callous tips, narrowed below to winged commonly cili- 
ated petioles; floral leaves reduced to lance-linear acute bracts: flowers 
rather distant, pedicellate, forming an elongated racemiform inflores- 
cence : bractlets lance-linear, ciliated : calyx glabrous, cylindric, 10 lines 
” length : petals deep red, 1} inches long; the blade elliptic, entire, 
obtuse ; the appendages lanceolate, entire: fruit and seeds not seen. — 
Type in the Gray Herbarium, collected by Mr. Charles Wright, but 
ray number or date, and bearing only the locality “Texas and — 
lsiana.” It is to be hoped that this attractive species may bate. oy 
