WESTONIELLA, A NEW GENUS OF THE ASTEREAE FT{(M THE COSTA RICAN PARAMOS. by Jos^ Cuatrecasas Department of Botany, Smithsonieui Institution Washington, D. C. 20560 During several years exploration of the high mountains of Costa Rica for ecological research, many less accessible areas never visited before by botanists, have been botanically scruti-nized by the intrepid. Dr. Arthur S. Weston. He gathered several thousand collections from the TaJLamanca Cordillera, mostly repre-sentatives of the pdramos . A part of the Compositae of his collections was turned over to me for identification. I found in it many novelties, which are not only significant for the flora of the Costa Rican paramos, but also because of the various undes-cribed taxa which represent additions to the already known series of Costa Rican endemics. The most important novelty is a new genus in the Astereae described here as Westoniella , represented by five distinct species which were all collected by Weston in the paramos or subparamos of the Chirrip6 massif and Buenavista massif. Of these five species, one had been collected before (by Pittier) and published first by Klatt as a Senecio , and transferred later by Greenman, to Erigeron . The other four species are all first records . Westoniella is mostly characterized by its tubular ray corol-las with a narrow proximal part and a more expanded, inflated, distal section representing the limb. The apex is contracted, the margin being almost entire or with five regular or oblique short teeth. A curving of the corolla or the obliqueness of the opening often make it slightly zygomorphic. The color may be roseate, red, lilac or white, contrasting more or less from the disc corolleis which are red, maroon or ptirplish and usually darker than the rays . The rays may be straight, the heads appearing discoid, or more or less bent downwards radiating, like in W. chirripoensis with spreading, showing, white rays . The corollas of both kinds have at the middle part copious obovate-oblong or claviform biseriate glandular trichomes . The styles have fine, long branches with marginal stigjnatic bands in the female flowers; they are lanceolate-oblong, rigid, non stigmatic and papillose-hispid abaxially in the functionally male, disc flowers . The ovaries of ray flowers and achenes are obovoid, somewhat compressed with roiinded apex, with 2 marginal costae and frequently with an additional prominent vein at one side. They have sparse or abundant geminate-celled trichomes throughout and few obovoid or pyriform glands near the apex. The sterile linear or oblong liTl
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