550 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
= = Involucral scales oblong, obtusish. 
a. Rays 7 to 8 mm. long. 
ve 54. V. oreopola. Shrub with short internodes and pale buff cortex: 
branchlets pubescent with fine white soft sub-appressed hairs: leaves nar- 
rowly lance-oblong, subentire or remotely serrulate, attenuate at the apex, 
narrowed to a sessile somewhat biauriculate base, green, puberulent, and 
slightly scabrous above, canescent-tomentose or merely pubescent and 
scarcely paler beneath, 5 to 15 cm. long, 1 to 2.5 cm. broad: heads (7 to 
10 mm. in diameter exclusive of rays) 14 to 20 in a compound flat-topped 
corymb: rays 10 to 12, oblong, yellow: bracts of the inflorescence linear- 
oblong, acute; involucral scales oblong, obtusish, soft-pubescent and cili- 
ate; chaff stramineous, abruptly contracted to a straight erect mucro: 
body of the achene black, puberulent, obovate; wings relatively broad, 
divergent at the summit; awns of the pappus 2, slender, two thirds as 
long as the body of the achene. — Collected in mountains about San Luis 
Potosi, August, 1876, Schaffner, no. 344; Parry & Palmer, no. 457 
(1878). Incorrectly referred to V. persicifolia and PV. salicifolia 
(= V. virgata). 
b. Rays broadly oblong, 3-dentate, 3 mm. long. 
55. V. guatemalensis. Stems striate, wingless, alternately branched, 
sparitigly pubescent: leaves alternate, lance-oblong, acute, subentire, gla- 
brate and bullate above, somewhat paler and canescent with fine close 
appressed pubescence beneath, 7 to 10 cm. long, 1 to 2 cm. broad, nar- 
rowed below to a biauriculate subamplexicaul base, not decurrent upo? 
the stem: inflorescence at first loosely but above fastigiately much- 
branched, sordid-pubescent: heads numerous, in fruit 7 to 9 mm. in di- 
ameter: rays very short, 3-dentate, little exserted, probably yellow: 
achenes obovate, broadly and equally winged ; wings rounded at the apex; 
body 5 mm. long, tuberculate especially along the prominent midnerve: 
pappus-awns 2, long, slender, equal. — V. virginica, Coulter in Donnell 
Smith, Enum. Pl. Guat. pt. 4, 88, not L.— Palin, Depart. Amatitlan, 
Guatemala, altitude 1,100 m., February, 1892, J. Donnell Smith, no. 
* * Leaves more or less decurrent upon the stem. 
« Involucral scales narrow, linear: pales villous near the summit. 
++ Leaves sparsely pubescent or at length glabrate beneath: Central American. 
56. V. parzens, Benth, in Oersted, Vidensk. Meddel. 1852, p. 973 
Hemsl. 1. c. 189.— Nicaragua, on the western slopes of the volcano El 
_ Viejo, Ocrsted. : 
