Annual hispid or setose herbs, with narrow leaves, the yellow flowers in scorpioid spikes. Calyx 5-parted, the segments linear. Corolla salverform or funnelform, the tube slender, naked or minutely crested in the throat, the 5 lobes spreading. Stamens 5, borne on the corolla-tube, included. Ovary deeply 4-lobed. Nutlets ovoid, rough, laterally attached to the receptacle below the middle. [In honor of William Amsinck, a burgomaster of Hamburg and friend of the Hamburg botanical garden.]

About 15 species, natives of western North America and Chile, the following typical.

I. Amsinckia Lycopsioides Lehm. Amsinckia

Fig. 3527

Lithospermum lycopsioides Lehm. Pug. 2: 28. 1830.

Amsinckia lycopsioides Lehm.; DC. Prodr. 10: 117. 1846.

Diffusely branched, loosely hispid with long, bristly hairs, the branches often 1° long, decumbent or ascending. Leaves lanceolate, oblong-lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, repand-dentate or entire, 3' long or less, sessile; scorpioid spikes short in flower, elongating in fruit, the lower flowers bracteolate, the upper ones commonly bractless; corolla about 4" long, its tube somewhat longer than the calyx; nutlets rugose-reticulate.

Waste grounds, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Ad-ventive from California. May-July.

Amsinckia intermedia F. & M., an erect Californian species, with orange-yellow flowers and linear leaves, has been found in eastern Long Island and Nantucket.