127.  Dalea pinetorum Gentry

(Plate CXII)

Herbaceous from a slender, oblique, perennial rootstock, 2-4 dm tall, the few (mostly 1-2) striate, greenish or livid-castaneous, simple and monocephalous, minutely glandular but not tuberculate stems finely pilose throughout with spreading or toward the base sometimes retrorse hairs up to 0.8-2 mm long, rather densely leafy in the upper half, giving rise at base, late in the season, to small, densely villous, leafy spurs, the foliage green, pilosulous like the stems but with slightly shorter hairs, the submembranous leaflets pubescent both sides or glabrescent above, closely and abundantly livid-punctate beneath; leaf-spurs subobsolete up to 0.6 mm long; stipules linear- or lance-acuminate, 4-9 mm long, herbaceous becoming papery-castaneous, pilosulous and charged with 2 lines of glands dorsally, glabrous within; intrapetiolular glands small; post-petiolular glands small but prominent, obtuse or mammiform; main cauline leaves 2-4 cm long, subsessile, with narrowly margined rachis and 7-16 (19) pairs of leaflets variable in shape as described for the varieties, but always flat or shallowly boat-shaped, never conduplicate, carinate dorsally, 3-8 mm long; peduncles 0-4.5 cm long; spikes dense but not conelike, subglobose to oblong-cylindroid, without petals 13-16 mm diam, the pilosulous axis becoming 1.5-5 cm long; bracts persistent, lance-caudate beyond the linear-cuneate base, 5.5-7 mm long, the thinly herbaceous, livid-green, gland-charged blade pilose externally, glabrous within; calyx 5.6-8.3 mm long, plumose-pilose throughout or only from the orifice upward, the tube 2-2.7 mm long, not or scarcely recessed behind the banner, the ribs slender but corneous, pallid or castaneous, the hyaline, flat intervals charged with 1 row of 3-4 orange blister-glands, the narrowly subulate-aristiform, gland-spurred, livid teeth unequal, the dorsal one longest, divergent in age, 3.5-5.6 mm long (1.5-3.5 mm longer than tube), the ventral pair a little shorter but hardly broader; flowers either bicolored or homochromous except for a pale eye in blade of the banner, the petals sometimes gland-charged (variable in the varieties), the inner ones elevated 1.5-2.8 mm above the hypanthium rim; banner 6.6-7.5 mm long, the claw 3.1-3.5 mm, the suborbicular, hooded blade 3.8-4.8 mm long, closed at base to form a cornet-like well; wings 6-6.8 mm long, the claw 1.7-2.1 mm, the oblong blade 4.6-4.8 mm long, 2.1-2.3 mm wide; keel 6.7-7.1 mm long, the claws 2-2.5 mm, the blades ± 5 mm long, 2.5-2.8 mm wide; androecium 10-merous, 8.5-11 mm long, the longest filament free for 2.5-3.3 mm; ovary membranous, pilose beyond the middle, the pod and seed unknown.The two known major populations of D. pinetorum lie distant nearly 300 kilometers one from the other, one on an outlying western spur of the Sierra Madre, on the watershed of Rios Mayo and Mulatos, the other near the crest of the main range at the sources of Rio Verde. The plants collected in these mutually remote spots are clearly of the same species, but differ in so many small features that I feel obliged to grant them some taxonomic recognition. Obviously a classification based on such small samples must be tentative at best, and will need revision as and when the range of the species becomes more fully known.