MALLOW FAMILY. 



241 



the lobes toothed or cleft, or the uppermost pedately divided into 5 to 

 7 lanceolate or linear mostly entire divisions; spikes dense, oblong, 1 

 to 2 in. long, long-peduncled; bracts narrowly linear or subulate; 

 calyx-lobes ovate, acute, about as long as the tube; corolla rose-pink, 

 5 or 0* lines long; carpels semi-orbicular, slightly beaked, 1 line long, 

 glabrous and smooth, or slightly wrinkled on the sides near the dorsal 

 angle. 



High mountains of Sonoma and Napa Cos. northward to Ml Shasta. 

 July-Sept. 



7. S. malachroides Gray. Herbage stellate-hispidulous; stems 

 stout, equably leafy to the summit, several from a perennial root, 

 simple below, ending above in a panicle of white flowers in short 

 dense spikes, or the panicle supplemented by some very slender 

 peduncle-like branches from the upper axils, each terminated by a 

 spike; leaves palmately but shallowly lobed, unequally dentate, 1 to 

 (mostly 2 to 3 1 in. broad; petioles of the basal leaves 6 in. long, 

 decreasing upward, those of the uppermost leaves shorter than the 

 blade; bracts linear or subulate; calyx lobes ovate, acuminate; fila- 

 ments of the outer series united for about £ their length or less into 

 pairs, or two such pairs slightly united by their bases making a set of 

 4; carpels sometimes present but probably abortive; pistillate flowers 

 3 to 3£ lines long, the tube of filaments short, more or less truncate 

 and without anthers; carpels 7 to 9, half dehiscent by a dorsal suture. 



Seaboard species from the Santa Lucia Mountains and Santa Cruz 

 northward to Crescent City, here described from abundant specimens 

 collected on Englewood Prairie, under Pinus ponderosa, Humboldt 

 Co., by Mr. J. B. Davy, June, 1899. This is the type of Greene's 

 genus Hesperalcea, which rests mainly on the character of the cotyle- 

 dons, which are ovate and not cordate as in S. malva^flora. S. 

 malachroides is, however, very like the California type of S. Oregana 

 in the form of its spikes and bractlets, and repeats in very many 

 features the structure and character of the gyno-dicecious flowers of 

 S. malvseflora. The leaves are peculiar in that none of them are 

 divided; but the lower ones (which are often small, round and scarcely 

 lobed) approach the lower leaves of the true Sidalceas. 



5. MALVASTRUM Gray. False Mallow. 

 Herbs or shrubs, ours mostly hoary -tomentose or canescent, with 

 commonly angular leaves. Flowers solitary or more commonly in 

 narrow subpaniculate racemes. Bractlets present (in ours), slender 

 and filiform. Carpels 5 or more, 1 to 3-seeded, the fruit often dehis- 

 cent and 2-valved. Seed ascending. (Malva, Mallow, and aster, 

 disparaging Latin suffix, not genuine or true.) 



Flowers solitary on long slender peduncles; petals rose-color; annual . . . 



1. M. exile. 



Flowers in subpaniculate racemes; petals yellow; perennials. 

 Herbage densely stellate-tomentose. 

 Leaves pentagonal or roundish ; petals rose-color; suffrutescent .... 



2. M. Frcmonti. 



Leaves ovate; petals yellow; shrub 3. il. arcuatum. 



Herbage finely stellate-canescent; petals rose-color ; shrub 



4. M. fasciculatu m. 



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