108 Edward L. Greene. 
XXII. Novitates Boreali-Americanae. Vl.) 
Auctore Edward L. Greene. 
Species novae generis Cercidis. 
(Originaldiagnosen.) 
The genus Cercis is but one among a considerable number of Old 
World types which, while in that hemisphere showing only one, or two 
or three species each, obtain their full amplification in North America, 
and especially in that vaster part of our continent which lies between 
the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. 
For the whole broad and much diversified expanse of the Eastern 
States, the Middle, the Southern and the Middle Western, one species 
only, C. Canadensis, Linn., has up to this time been accredited; but then, 
one meefs with no evidence that any one has given this so-called species, 
— this cercis of all the longitudes and latitudes and altitudes, and soils 
and climates east of the Mississippi — any critical study whatsover. 
During a hundred and fifty years, one generation of botanists has copied 
the other in writing „C. Canadensis L.“ for everything, whether from 
the subtropic confines of the Gulf of Mexico, or the comparatively frigid 
climate of the Saint-Lawrence and the northern lakes; also everywhere 
regardless of soils, altitudes and other environmental influences which 
can not but modify things and alter them. But he who would give to 
this East North American tree its phytographie deserts, and determine 
whether it is to be resolved into several varieties or a number of species, 
must encounter at the outset one grave difficulty, that of the real 
applicability of the Linnaean name. To the thing which he named C. 
Canadensis he attributed pubescent-leaves. Now the great-bulk of the 
material existing in our largest herbaria under that name exhibits foliage 
that at first and second view impresses one as being glabrous. When 
you examine the leaf in every part with a magnifier you still find the 
upper face glabrous, and the lower usually so, in the main, but with 
some hirtellous hairs along the veins, next the base of the leaf. In only 
a few instances han I found some scattered hairs between the veins 
beneath; in a greater number both faces are totally glabrous. Lin- 
naeus Writes the leaves of his shrub as pubescent, without qualification. 
He knew the shrub in young condition both in the garden of Cliffort, 
and in that at Upsala. The seeds were reputed to have come from Ca- 
nada or Virginia, No cercis with leaves „pubescent“, unqualifiedly so 
and plainly so, is to-day known from eastern America. No American 
botanist, describing any so-called C. Canadensis has ever reiterated, in 
relation to such „shrub or tree, that phrase of Linnaeus foliis * * pubes- 
centibus“. It does noc follow that no such tree exists, awaiting redis- 
1) L IL: Rep. V, pp. 45—46, 241—244. —- II. IV. V.: Rep. VII, pp. 1—6, 
159—197, 252—255. 
