Descriptive Flora 



243 



a fringe of longer, lavender ray-flowers. The stout stalks enlarge 

 at the top just below the cup of green, priekly-margined, mem- 

 braneous bracts that are covered with star-shaped hairs and give 

 the involucre a scaly appearance. March to June. In dry soil. 

 Often growing in large patches along roadsides and in pastures. 

 Related to the popular corn-flower, Ceutcmreu a] anus. 



Ckaptalia nutans (L.) Hemsl. Sun-bonnet Babies. 



(ThyrsantJiema nutans [L.] Kuntze.) Silver Puffs. 



Early blossoming, with white to yellowish-white flowers, 

 nodding singly on leafless woolly stalks, 2 to 4" long, and com- 

 ing out of a rosette of woolly root leaves. Leaves simple, 1 to 6 

 inches long. Blades shallowly cut or wavy, dark green, smooth 

 or covered with cobwebby hairs above, and white with matted 

 woolly hairs underneath, broad above and tapering below, the 

 blade continuing along the petiole to the base. Flowers white, 

 fringy, about y 2 " l° n g> contained in a woolly cup, consisting of 

 numerous woolly, usually purplish tipped, narrow, pointed bracts 

 of many lengths, the outer successively shorter. Eay flowers 

 few, white. Disk corollas slightly 2-lipped and 5-lobed. January 

 and February. In shaded ravines. 



Perezia runcinata Lag. Perezia. 



Stemless plants with stiff, crisp, dull green, prickly-edged 

 leaves and one to several, deep rose-pink flowers, rising on naked 

 stalks out of the rosette of leaves. Leaves simple, 2 to 8 inches 

 long, cut along the margin into round and evenly spiny-toothed 

 lobes. Flowers composite, rose-pink to rose-purple, about 1 inch 

 across and consisting of numerous, tubular, 2-lipped corollas, the 

 corollas at the margin having larger lower lips. Aehenes 

 cylindrical, each with a tuft of fine hairs over y± long attached 

 at the tip. March and April. Rich, shaded soil of ledges of 

 limestone hills of the Edwards Plateau. Rarely seen in the 

 sandy region to the south. 



