184 COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 



all yellow : disk at length columnar, an inch or more long. — Plains, from the 

 Rocky Mountains to the Saskatchewan and Texas. 



Var. pulcherrima, Torr. & Gray. A part or even the whole upper face 

 of the ray brown-purple. — From Arizona to Texas and Nebraska. 



36. BALSAMORRHIZA, Hook. 



Low ; with thick, deep and balsamic roots ; a tuft of radical leaves mostly 

 on long petioles ; and short simple few-leaved flowering stems or naked scapes, 

 bearing large and mostly solitary heads of yellow flowers. 



* Leaves entire or nearly so; the principal ones cordate or with cordate base and 



long-petioled. 



1. B. sagittata, Nutt. Silvery-canescent, and the involucre white-woolly : 

 radical leaves from cordate-oblong to hastate, 4 to 9 inches long, the base 2 to 

 6 inches wide,' on petioles of greater length ; the few and inconspicuous cauline 

 from linear to spatulate : scape at length a foot or more high : rays 1 to 2 

 inches long. — Mountains of Colorado to Montana and British Columbia. 

 Used for food by the Indians. 



* * Leaves neither entire nor cordate, varying from laciniately dentate to bipin- 



nately divided: heads solitary on a naked scape or one bearing a pair of small 

 opposite leaves towards the base. 



2. B. macrophylla, Nutt. Green, not at all canescent, glabrate, except 

 the ciliate margins of the leaves, usually minutely glandular-viscidulous : 

 leaves ample, ovate or oblong in outline, a span to a foot long, some with only one 

 or two lobes or coarse teeth, most of them pinnately parted into broadly lanceo- 

 late and commonly entire lobes : scapes a foot or two high : bracts of the invo- 

 lucre from narrowly lanceolate to spatulate and foliaceous, an inch or two 

 long, nearly equal, either half or fully the length of the rays. — Trans. Am. 

 Phil. Soc. vii. 350. Rocky and Wasatch Mountains, Wyoming to Utah. 



3. B. Hookeri, Nutt. Canescent with fine sericeous or more tomentose pu- 

 bescence, but not at all hirsute : scapes and leaves a span to a foot high ; the 

 latter lanceolate or elongated-oblong in outline, pinnately or bipinnately parted into 

 lanceolate or linear divisions or lobes, or some of them only pinnatifid or incised : 

 involucre from canescently puberuleut to lauate ; its bracts from linear- to 

 oblonjr-lanceolate, either unequal and well imbricated or sometimes the outer- 

 most foliaceous and enlarged. — Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 301. West of our range, 

 but represented by 



Var. incana, Gray. Densely white-tomentose : leaves often of broader out- 

 line. — Synopt. Fl. i. 266. B. incana, Nutt. Wyoming and Montana to 

 N. California. 



37. WYETHIA, Nutt. 



Stout and mostly low ; with ample undivided pinnately veined alternate 

 leaves (mostly entire), and large heads of mostly yellow flowers. 



* Bays from pale yellow or dull straiv-color to white. 

 1. W. heliailthoides, Nutt. A span to a foot and a half high, simple 

 and with a single large head, or rarely 3 or 4, hirsute : leaves from oval to 



