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The North American Species of [25]

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simply that tongue-like northern extension in the mountains between the Pecos and the Upper Rio Grande (above. El Paso), viz.: dasyacanthus, tuberculosus, scheerii (which has also spread somewhat east of the Pecos), and the three pectinate and closely related forms radians, echinus, and scolymoides. Of the four remaining Mexican forms, macromeris is a low ground Rio Grande Valley form, extending from above El Paso well towards the Lower Rio Grande; potsii just crosses the border in the neighborhood of Laredo; and radiosus and neo-mexicanus have by far the greatest northern extension, stretching from Sonora and Chihuahua to southern Utah and central Colorado, and eastward to the Guadalupe River of Texas.

The nine remaining coryphanths are distinctly forms of the United States, occupying two well-marked regions, viz.: the northern plains, and the desert region of western Arizona and adjacent California, Nevada, and Utah. In the former region is found the widespread viviparus, which extends from the southern borders of British America to the plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas, and even crosses the Rocky Mountain divide into northern Idaho and northeastern Washington; and missouriensis, which also ranges from the high prairies of the Upper Missouri to the same southern limit, and is continued southward into Texas in its varieties similis and robustior.

In the Arizona desert region, four distinct but closely allied forms have become differentiated from the strong radiosus stock, viz.: arizonicus, deserti, alversoni, and chloranthus, all of which might be regarded as distinct species. In southeastern Texas is found an isolated form, sulcatus, occurring between the Brazos and Nueces rivers. That viviparus must be regarded as a strong northern extension of the radiosus stock can not be doubted, as the low depressed cespitose northern form seems to merge southward so gradually into the simple more robust ovate to cylindrical forms of radiosus as to suggest the propriety of regarding them all as specifically identical.

The result of a closer inspection of the distribution of these nearly related forms is worthy of note. C. viviparus extends from British America and the Upper Missouri to eastern Colorado and western Kansas; neo-mexicanus (the form most nearly related to viviparus) extends from central Colorado and southern Utah into Mexico; at the southeastern edge of this range begins radiosus and extends eastward through southern Texas; from the western edge of neo-mexicanus the form arizonicus extends westward into southern California, touching chloranthus at its Utah limit, and at its California extension reaching alversoni and deserti, the latter of which extends northward into the desert region of southeastern California and adjacent Nevada. Taking this type as of Mexican origin, it seems to have entered the United States from Sonora and Chihuahua, and to have spread in three directions, viz.: eastward through southern Texas; westward and northwestward into southern California and southern, Utah; and northward to the head waters of the Missouri and British America, though we would limit the northern extension of the present specific type to central Colorado, and would regard the still more northern forms as of the same origin but entitled to specific rank.


2. ANHALONIUM Lem. Cact. Gen. Nov. (1839).

Depressed or flattened, simple, unarmed plants, covered with peculiar imbricated tubercles above and their scale-like remains below: tubercle with lower and upper parts very different; lower part comparatively thin and flat; upper exposed part triangular in outline and divergent, very thick and hard, the lower surface smooth and keeled, the upper surface plane or convex, smooth or tuberculate or variously fissured, with a broad wool-bearing groove or simply a more or less evident tomentulose apical areola: spine-bearing areola obsolete: flower-bearing areola at the summit of the lower peduncle-like portion of the very young tubercle (thus appearing axillary with reference to the exposed
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