A STUDY IN ZAUSCHNERIA 
By George L. Moxley 
This strikingly beautiful genus of western fall-blooming plants 
has been too little studied, partly because, as Dr. E. L. Greene 
suggested, we have been told that it consists of a single very 
variable species, and partly, perhaps, because of its late flowering 
which brings it into its splendor after the usual collecting season 
is mostly over. The present study was undertaken primarily for 
the purpose of satisfying the author as to the relationships of 
some of the forms and as to the geographical continuity of these 
forms. About three years ago a brief study was made of some 
of the local forms, using such material as could be begged, bor- 
rowed or otherwise acquired, but, from the meagerness of the 
material and the fact that most of it came from the same general 
region, the results were not entirely satisfying. At the beginning 
of the present year he secured the loan of a large series of speci- 
mns from the herbaria of th University of California and the 
California Academy of Sciences, and somewhat later from the 
Dudley Herbarium of Stanford University. Smalier lots were 
borrowed from Pomona College and the Carnegie Museum. 
These, with his own collection and several specimens contributed 
from various sources, gave the author nearly 300 sheets for study. 
These range from Rogue River, Oregon, and the Teton Forest, 
in Wyoming, on the north, to Sonora and Lower California on 
the south, and from near sea-level to well up in the high Sierras. 
In addition to this material, Miss Alice Eastwood, of the Cali- 
fornia Academy of Sciences, very kindly sent quite a quantity 
of MSS notes which she made at Gray Herbarium some years 
ago and had never published. These have had a more or less 
critical examination during the past few months and the con- 
clusions arrived at are here set forth to be taken at such valua- 
tion as may be accorded them. 
It should, however, be understood that this is not offered as 
a revision of the genus. The author would be very reluctant to 
undertake such a work without having access to the large eastern 
collections, since many of the forms of Arizona, Mexico and 
Lower California are but poorly represented in the collections 
which it has been his privilege to examine. 
The literature of Zauschneria is very meager. The first refer- 
ence seems to have been about 1805, as evidenced by the follow- 
ing quotation from the Botanical Magazine for February, 1850: 
"Forty-five years ago this handsome plant was alluded to in an 
excellent memoir on Goniocarpus, published by Mr. Koenig in 
the 'Annals of Botany' vol. I., p. 543, as existing in the Ranksian 
Herbarium, 'a beautiful new genus, a native of California, having 
the flowers of a Fuchsia and a fruit exactly like Epilobium.' " It 
13 
