384 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
Tequila, 5 October, 1893. A highly ornamental species, distinguished 
by its large flowers, and figured in ‘ Garden and Forest,’ vii. 175. 
CourseTiA MOLLIs. A low shrub, 3-6 feet high: branches striate, 
glabrate, gray ; branchlets and petioles glandular-tomentose: leaves 
15-21-foliate, 4-7 inches long ; leaflets elliptic-oblong, rounded at the 
apex, apiculate or retuse, soft cinereous-pubescent, 8-11 lines long, 34-5 
lines broad ; youngest leaves white, silky-villous ; stipules subulate, 
1}-2 lines long, villous, persistent as short rigid spines: racemes 
shorter than the leaves, 14-3 inches long, few-flowered; pedicels 
about three lines long: calyx deeply and subequally 5-cleft, 44-6 
lines long, glandular ; segments lanceolate acute: corolla 7—9 lines 
long ; the orbicular standard reddish brown in a dried state; the wings 
and keel yellow: ovary shortly stipitate, glandular-tomentose, about 
12-ovuled ; pod pubescent, 2-24 inches long, 2 lines broad, about 
7-seeded. — Collected in the barranca of Beltran, 5 June, 1893 (no. 
5491), 
Desmopium sprrate, DC. The numerous and varied forms of 
Desmodium which in their technical characters closely agree with this 
species form one of the most puzzling groups of the genus. A fairly 
extensive series of specimens from South America, West Indies, and 
especially from Mexico and New Mexico, goes far to confirm the view 
expressed by Bentham (Flora Brasiliensis, xv. pt. 1, 105, 106, and re- : 
peated by Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. I. 188) that these closely related forms 
are better regarded as constituting one polymorphous species. Never- 
theless, it is desirable that the chief tendencies of variation should 
be indicated. The original descriptions of Desmodium (Hedysarum) 
spirale by Swartz (Prodr. 107), and De Candolle (Prodr. ii. 332), 
indicate that the type of the species had trifoliate leaves with roundish- 
ovate leaflets. Of this form specimens from the following localities 
have been seen: Toscano, Cuba, Wright (no. 2319); Jamaica, Mae- 
Jadyen ; Porto Rico, Sintensis (no. 1981) ; Tovar, Venezuela, Vendler 
(nos. 1785, 1786); Guayaquil, Hartweg (no. 650, D. sylvaticum, 
Benth.); Costa Rica, Oersted ; Brazil, Burchell (no. 9092); and Jalisco, 
Pringle (no. 3882). In all these specimens the pods are very slender — 
and strongly contorted, the segments being only 3-1 line broad. From 
this form the following varieties may be distinguished : — 
var. TRANSVERSUM. Low, 6-10 inches high, with spreading 
branches : leaves small, all or the lower unifoliate ; the single terminal - 
leaflets being transversely rhombic, 4-8 lines broad, two thirds as — 
long; the upper leaves with oyate-oblong leaflets: pod very slender 
and strongly twisted, as in the type. — Collected by Mr. Pringle on 
