504 



COMPOSITE. 



Flowers yellow. Receptacle with linear bristle-like palese. Outer 

 bracts of the involucre terminating in foliaceous appendages like the 

 stem-leaves; inner bracts more rigid, appressed, ending in a spines- 

 cent tip. Achenes obpyramidal, with a crenulate margin at the 

 truncate summit. Pappus-palea? of 2 kinds, the outer unequal, 

 ciliate, in several series, the inner in one series and much shorter; or 

 pappus quite wanting in the outer row of achenes. 



1. C. lanatum DC. The outer and inner involucral bracts differ 

 very much. 



Native of the Mediterranean Region: spontaneous at San Fran- 

 cisco. 



20. CYNARA Vaill. 



Stout perennial herb with ample pinnatifid or bipinnatifid leaves 

 with spine-tipped segments. Flowers blue. Heads very large, soli- 

 tary on the ends of the branches. Bracts of the involucre broadly 

 ovate, obtuse or emarginate, coriaceous. Receptacle fleshy, fimbril- 

 late. Pappus of many series of plumose bristles. Achenes obovate, 

 somewhat 4-angled. (From the Greek kuon, a dog, the spines of the 

 involucre being likened to dog's teeth.) 



1. C. Scolymus L. Artichoke. One to 2£ ft. high; herbage 

 more or less tomentose. 



Garden-plant, found by waysides at Napa and Alameda and in old 

 fields near Benicia. 



21. CIRSIUM Scop. This ilk. 

 Stout mostly biennial herbs. Leaves alternate, prickly or spiny, 

 commonly toothed or pinnatifid. Heads with numerous crimson, 

 white or yellowish flowers, perfect and all alike. Corolla tubular, its 

 segments linear-filiform. Involucre spherical to campanulate, ovoid 

 or cylindrical, its bracts imbricated in many ranks, at least the outer 

 tipped with a spine or prickle, rarely innocuous. Receptacle thickly 

 clothed with soft bristles or hairs. Achenes obovate or oblong, com- 

 pressed, not ribbed, smooth and glabrous. Pappus of a single series of 

 bristles, plumose or barbel late to the middle, clavellate-dilated at tip. 

 united into a ring at the base and deciduous as a whole. (Kirsion, 

 Greek name of a kind of thistle.) 



Stems conspicuously winged by the decurrent leaves, the wings rigid, spiny 

 and interrupted; naturalized species 1. C. lanccolatum. 



Stems not decurrently winged, or if decurrent, the wing not rigid or spiny; 

 native species (except no. 2?). 



A. Involucral bracts herbaceous, very broad from the appressed base to 

 the squarrose-spreading or recurved abruptly acute apex; narrower 

 innocuous inner ones comparatively few; heads nodding 



2. C. fontinale. 



B. Involucral bracts not appressed-imbricated; heads leafy-bracted, clus- 

 tered or not conspicuously long-peduncled, erect as in all the follow- 

 ing. 



Leaves thin, sinuately lobed, very prickly but the prickles weak; invo- 

 lucre somewhat cobwebby; stems succulent; common 



3. C. edult. 



