Questions concerning the status of the trimorphic and bimorphic heads in Texas Chaptalia texana led me to examine carefully the 40 Texas specimens in the TEX/LL collections. My results are given in the following tables.

[For documentation of individual specimens.]

month	total	clearly trimorphic	trimorphic with reduced ligules	bimorphic	lacked florets
March	16	15	1	0	0
April	13	10	2	0	1
May	2	1	0	0	1
August–November	9	3	3	2	1
Total	40	29	6	2	3

All but two of the specimens are trimorphic. Three quarters are from early spring – March, April & May – the two bimorphic specimens were from late November.

Other features of C. texana in Central Texas, not always clearly detailed in the literature, are (i) the heads are often (but not always) ‘nodding’; and (ii) the heads commonly do not open. Cf. M. Enquist, Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country (1987), p. 250:

Naked peduncles 3-12" long carry the nodding, cylindrical flower heads. The heads are 1/2-1" long and remain tightly compacted until it is time to release the mature seed, at which time they expand into globe-like seedheads.

The pressed herbarium specimens in general were not mounted in a manner that permits an analysis of the nodding behavior of C. texana. [For details of nodding based on fresh specimens.]

The open heads of C. texana exhibit a diurnal cycle. A closed–head bloom, could perhaps be both less obvious and even if noticed, less likely to be collected (considered not yet in flower, or not yet open). This might account for the relatively small number of Chaptalia texana collections in the TEX/LL holdings (as seen in the table at the bottom of this page). Unfortunately the collections do not allow determination of the closed/open head distinction, nor is any note of this found with the specimens. One specimen appears to have had an open head (Medina Co., E. R. Bogusch 807 [LL]), and only five others might have had an open head.

Thymophylla pentachaeta	322	Liatris punctata var. mucronata	77
Ratibida columnifera	306	Grindelia lanceolata	71
Tetraneuris scaposa var. scaposa	296	Vernonia lindheimeri	64
Tetraneuris linearifolia	243	Chrysactinia mexicana	62
Engelmannia peristenia	193	Grindelia nuda	60
Cirsium texanum	175	Solidago nemoralis	60
Erigeron modestus	168	Tetragonotheca texana	49
Liatris punctata var. punctata	151	Dysodiopsis tagetoides	44
Centaurea americana	136	Chaptalia texana	40
Chaetopappa asteroides var. asteroides	108	Brickellia cylindracea	37
Erigeron philadelphicus	98	Ageratina havanensis	29
Centaurea melitensis	89	Verbesina lindheimeri	22