236 



STERCULIACE.E. 



lanceolate or linear-oblong, acute, inserted by a narrow base, usually 

 folded, black-dotted as in the preceding but more scantily, f to 1£ in. 

 long; flowers 1 in. or more broad, in rather close clusters at summit 

 of the stem; sepals ovate, mucronate-acuminate, longer than the 

 capsule; stamens numerous. 



Dry bushy mountain slopes and ridges: North Coast Ranges (Vaca 

 Mountains, Knoxville, Howell Mountain, Ukiah); Sierra Nevada. 

 June-Sept. 



45. STERCULIACE>£. Sterculia Family. 



Shrubs or trees with alternate leaves and perfect regular or nearly 

 regular o-merous flowers. Stamens united at base into a tube. Fruit 

 a capsule. 



1. FREMONTIA Torr. 



Leaves small, often lobed. Pubescence stellate. Flowers showy, 

 short-pediceled, solitary and axillary on the branchlets. Stipules 

 caducous. Bractlets 3 to 5, small. Calyx yellow and corolla-like, 

 deeply 5-cleft into round-ovate lobes or sepals; these imbricated in the 

 bud, the three inner a little larger, all with a rounded and sharply 

 defined short-hairy glandular area at base. Corolla none. Stamens 

 5; filaments united to the middle. Style one, elongated, the acute 

 apex stigmatic. Fruit a 4 or 5-celled capsule, loculicidally dehiscent. 

 (In honor of its discoverer, General John C. Fremont, the Path- 

 finder of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, and first United 

 States Senator from California.) 



1. F. Californica Torr. Mountain Leatiierwood. Loosely 

 branching and bush-like, 6 to 10 ft. high or becoming a small tree as 

 much as 18 ft. high; branches tough and flexible, with many short 

 leaf- and flower-bearing branchlets or spurs; leaves green above, 

 covered beneath with a dense gray or whitish felt, ^ to 1 in. long, or 

 on sterile shoots somewhat larger; petioles short; calyx flannel-like, 

 lh to 2 in. broad, persistent, the sepals commonly mucronate; capsule 

 ovate, covered with a dense brown felt and with short bristly hairs, 

 | to 1J in. long, persistent. 



Rare in our region: Hunt Valley, Lake Co., Bolander; Loma 

 Prieta. Santa Cruz Mountains, Behr; near Wright's Station, acc. to 

 K. Brandegee. Abundant in the southern Sierras. 



46. MALVACEAE. Mallow Family. 



Herbs or soft-woody shrubs with mucilaginous juice, tough fibrous 

 inner bark, and usually stellate pubescence. Leaves alternate, simple, 

 palmately veined and commonly lobed, stipulate. Flowers commonly 

 perfect, sometimes polygamous or dio?cious, regular. Calyx with 5 

 lobes, valvate in the bud, often with an involucel of bractlets at base. 

 Petals 5, twisted in the bud. Stamens indefinite, hypogynous, mona- 

 delphous in a column or tube around the pistils, the petals inserted on 

 the base of the tube. Pistil 1, composed of several to many carpels, 



