A perennial fleshy glabrous glaucous diffusely branched herb, with alternate entire leaves, and small blue pinkish or white flowers in loose terminal leafy-bracted racemes. Calyx-lobes triangular-ovate or lanceolate, somewhat enlarging in fruit. Corolla tubular-campanulate, crested in the throat, 5- lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, slightly spreading. Filaments slender, scarcely exserted. Ovary 4-divided; style slender. Nutlets erect, fleshy, attached just above their bases to the somewhat elevated receptacle, smooth, shining, acutish-margined, becoming utr.icle-like when mature.

A monotypic genus of sea-beaches of the north temperate zone.

1. Pneumaria Maritima (L.) Hill. Sea Lungwort. Sea Bugloss. Oyster Plant

Fig. 3523

Pulmonaria maritima L. Sp. Pl. 136. 1753.

P. maritima Hill, Veg. Syst. 40. pl. 37. f. .3. 1764.

Mertensia maritima S. F. Gray, Nat. Arr. Brit. Pl.

354. 1821.

Pale green, the branches spreading or ascending, 3'-15' long. Leaves thick, ovate, obovate, or oblong, 1'-4' long, acute or obtuse at the apex, narrowed at the base, the lower and basal ones contracted into margined petioles, the uppermost smaller; flowers blue or nearly white, about 3" long, all pedicelled; pedicels very slender, 5"-18" long; calyx shorter than the corolla-tube; corolla with a crest in the throat opposite each lobe; nutlets about as long as the calyx-lobes when mature.

On sea-beaches, Long Island (?), Massachusetts to Newfoundland and Greenland, Oregon to Alaska. Also on the coasts of Europe and Asia. May-Sept.