506 



COMPOSITE. 



3. C. edule Nutt. Stem simple, robust but tender and succulent, 

 3£ to nearly 6 ft. high, pubescent and leafy to the top, the leaves 

 thin; radical leaves 8 to 10 in. long, narrowly oblanceolate, shallowly 

 (rarely deeply) sinuate-pinnatifid, very prickly-ciliate but the prickles 

 weak; cauline leaves similar or oblong or narrower; heads depressed- 

 globose, 1 to 1£ in. high, few in a terminal cluster, leafy-bracted at 

 base; involucre conspicuously arachnoid-woolly when young, nearly 

 glabrate in age; bracts lanceolate-subulate, setaceous; flowers dull 

 purple or whitish, segments of the corolla shorter than throat and 

 with callous thickening at apex. — (Cnicus edulis Gray.) 



Common along creeks and gulches in the Coast Eanges: San Fran- 

 cisco Peninsula; Oakland Hills; Marin Co. and northward. June. 



4. C. Andrewsii (Gray). Doubtless tall and slender, branching 

 at summit, the loose wool deciduous except from the heads; stem 

 strongly striate; radical leaves 16 in. long, deeply sinuate-pinnatifid 

 into 3-cleft lobes terminating in a stout spine, the outline oblong but 

 the lobes toward the base obsolete, resulting in a prickly-margined 

 petiole about 4 in. long; upper leaves lacinlate-pinnatifid and with 

 narrowly lanceolate prickly lobes; heads somewhat clustered or 

 pedunculate, hemispherical, 1 to 1£ in. high, leafy-bracted at base; 

 involucre arachnoid-woolly, becoming flocculent; bracts with coria- 

 ceous oblong-ovate base, the short upper part greenish, and abruptly 

 contracted into an awn-like spine; corolla apparently whitish, its 

 segments longer than the throat. — (Cnicus Andrewsii Gray.) 



Collected at some now unknown station in California by Dr. 

 Andrews and named by Dr. Gray in 1874; collected since only by 

 Miss Eastwood in a marsh near Tennessee Bay, May 31, 1896 

 (apparently also at Lake Merced) and distributed by her as Carduus 

 amplifolius Greene; if her identification be correct Greene's name is a 

 synonym. The radical leaves in Miss Eastwood's specimen are 

 white-tomentose beneath, green and glabrate above. 



•">. C. crassicaule (Greene). Steins 3 or 4 ft. high, very stout 

 below, hollow, 1 in. thick, striate, branching above, and bearing a 

 panicle of 6 to 9 subsessile or short-peduncled heads; herbage in the 

 mature plant gray-pubescent, especially the under surface of the 

 leaves; leaves similar to the preceding; heads 1$ to rather less than 1 

 in. high; involucre turbinate-campanulate, perfectly glabrous in age; 

 proper bracts linear-lanceolate to lanceolate-acuminate, entire and 

 tipped with a rather long slender prickle; leafy bracts with a few 

 strong prickles or pectinate-spinescent, the inner sometimes apparently 

 passing into the proper bracts; flowers whitish or pinkish; segments 

 about as long as the throat. — (Carduus crassicaulis Greene.) 



Roadsides and low fields of the San Joaquin between Banta and 

 Lathrop. July. The glabrous involucre and the lanceolate-acuminate 

 bracts will distinguish this species from the at present known forms 

 of C. Andrewsii, the bracts of which are abruptly attenuate. It is 

 not unreasonable to question this plant as a native, the Lower San 

 Joaquin being notorious as a region furnishing alien plants which 

 havo been described as "new species." 



