548 



COMPOSITE. 



68. STYLOCLINE Nutt. 



Low floccose-woolly annuals with entire leaves and terminal discoid 

 heads in small clusters. Pistillate flowers with filiform corolla, their 

 bracts ovate, boat-shaped, borne on a slender column-like receptacle, 

 with erect hyaline tip and the conduplicate body loosely enclosing 

 the achene; pappus none. Sterile flowers few in the center, their 

 bracts plane or barely concave and their pappus caducous or none. 

 (Greek stulos, a column, and kline, a bed, on account of the form of 

 the receptacle.) 



Bracts of the sterile flowers inconspicuous, oblanceolate, acute; pappus 

 present 1. S. gnaphalioides. 



Bracts about sterile flowers ovate-lanceolate, tapering into a conspicuous 

 rigid hooked cusp; pappus none 2. S. filaginea. 



1. S. gnaphalioides Nutt. Loosely white-woolly, diffusely 

 branched, the stems 4 to 9 in. long; leaves broadly linear or the 

 upper oblong, obtuse, barely 3 lines long; pistillate (or fertile) 

 flowers numerous, their bracts ovate, nearly plane on the upper sur- 

 face, a central portion at the base produced on the lower 6ide into a 

 sac enclosing the achene, this portion firm, the remainder hyaline; 

 sterile flowers little shorter than their bracts, with rudimentary ovary 

 and a pappus of few caducous bristles. 



Stanislaus Co. to Monterey, doubtless within our limits. Sac 

 woolly on lower side. Sterile flowers little shorter than their bracts. 



2. S. filaginea Gray. Erect, branched from the base, 2 to 8 in. 

 high, canescent with fine appressed wool which is later flocculent; 

 cauline leaves narrowly linear (J line wide), those involucrate to the 

 heads much broader; fertile flowers 5 to 9, their bracts boat-shaped, 

 firm except at the hyaline tip, smaller than the 5 empty bracts which 

 surround the sterile flowers in the center; empty bracts somewhat 

 coriaceous, tapering into a rigid incurved hooked cusp, persistent, 

 and at length stellately spreading. • 



Mendocino Co. (first coll. by Bolander in Round Valley); Tehama 

 Co., Jepson; Mt. St. Helena, Greene; southward to Southern Cali- 

 fornia. Last of Apr.-May. Very suggestive in aspect of Filago 

 Gallica. 



69. PSILOCARPHUS Nutt. 

 Depressed or prostrate white-woolly annuals. Leaves opposite, 

 entire, the uppermost involucrate around the small sessile globose 

 heads, which are solitary in the forks or at the ends of the branches, 

 or some clustered. Heads discoid. Bracts clothed with soft wool, 

 crowded on the low receptacle and forming a globose head; each bract 

 sac-like, half-obcordate or obovate in side view, hooded and rounded 

 at the top with the apex introrse (turned downward and inward) and 

 beaked by a hyaline appendage or scale. Flowers unisexual; pistil- 

 late flowers loosely enclosed in the sac-like bracts, with filiform 

 corollas; staminate flowers few, occupying the center of the head and 

 naked, i. <?., destitute of enclosing or other bracts. Achenes straight 

 or slightly curved. Pappus none. (Greek psilos, bare, and karphos, 

 chaff) 



