The botanical characters of some Californian species of Grindelia / by Pierre Élie Félix Perrédès.

  • Perrédès, Pierre Élie Félix.
Date:
[1906.]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The botanical characters of some Californian species of Grindelia / by Pierre Élie Félix Perrédès. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Presented to the Scientific Section oRthe American'Pharmaceutical Association, at the Fifty-fourth Annual Meeting, held at Indianapolis, Ind., September, 1906. THE BOTANICAL CHARACTERS OF SOME CALIFORNIAN SPECIES OF GRIN DELI A. BY PIERRE ELIE F&LIX PERR&DES, B. SC., F. L. S. Pharmaceutical Chemist. [A Contribution from the Wellcome Research Laboratories, London.] In a paper presented to this Association last year by F. B. Power and F. Tutin, on the ‘‘Chemical Examination of Grindelia,” * the authors stated that the material employed by them, having been obtained “directly from California,” “was evidently Grindelia robusta, one of the varieties of the latter, or a closely related species. The material in question was, in fact, found to conform most closely in its characters to the description of Grindelia camporum, Greene.” In a discussion which followed the reading of the paper it was remarked by one of the speakers (Professor Rusby) that the authors had failed “ to state the exact species of the grindelia used, and that in California one would meet Grindelia robusta or Grindelia squarrosa, and more likely the latter” (Joe. cit., p. 201). Since the presentation of the above-mentioned paper, I have had an opportunity of submitting a sample of the material used by Power and Tutin to Dr. Willis L. Jepson, author of the “ Flora of Western Middle California,” and he states that the plant is undoubtedly G. camporum as defined by him in the aforesaid work. With regard to Professor Rusby’s statement, the fact may be noted that Grindelia squarrosa, Dunal (Donia squarrosa, Pursh) can hardly be said to occur in California at all. Its dis¬ tribution is given by Gray in the “Synoptical Flora of North America” (Vol. I, Part II, p. 118) as “ Plains and prairies, Minnesota and Saskatche¬ wan to Montana and south to Missouri and Texas, west to Nevada, Arizona, and borders of California (Mex.),” and by Britton and Brown in their “Illustrated Flora of the Northern States and Canada” (Vol. Ill, p. 321) as “ In dry soil, Illinois and Minnesota to Manitoba, south to Missouri, Texas, Nevada and Mexico. Adventive in southern New Jersey. Grin- delia squarrosa, Dunal, is not mentioned in the “ Botany of California,” and I, myself, have not seen any undoubted specimen of this species from California, either at the British Museum or at Kew. Dr. Jepson, who has made a life-long study of the Flora of California, also informs me that he has never found it in that State. The Grindelia camporum of Greene, as extended by Jepson in the “Flora of Western Middle California,” is the common “gum plant” of Cali¬ fornia, and I am told by Dr. Jepson that the frequency of its occurrence *Proc. A. Ph. A., 1905, S3, p. 193.