STUDIES OF THAUCTRACEAE — I. 51 



The earliest trivial name in any way representing an 

 ^ American white-flowered member of this genus is the T/ialie- 



trum Canadcnse of Cornutus. It is of the year 1635. That 



author's using an e rather than a r in the second syllable of 



r the generic name bespeaks a doubt that existed in the minds 



^ of earlier botanical scholars as to whether the name was 



intended of old to be Thalicirum or Thalictrum. For almost 

 tw^o centuries the validit}^ of T, Cajiadensc was unquestioned. 

 Tournefort, like others of his time, sustained it, and of course 

 under the name at first assigned. Linnaeus in his day sup- 

 pressed the then well established T. Canadensc and renamed 

 the species T, CormitL The change was as arbitrary as possi- 

 ble, yet the new name became current almost everywhere ; 

 and in, I think, all American books of botany down to the 

 beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Dur- 

 ing about 140 years, then, every kind of tall panicled meadow 

 rue displaying clavate white filaments was named T, Cornuti ; 

 then all at once, and with little by way of apology, the best 

 known of American botanists dismissed the name T. Cornuti 

 and put in its place T. polygamtun^ a nomen nudum printed 

 long, long ago by Muhlenberg. From 1895 forward to the 

 present, books and catalogues sustain, on the mere word of 

 Gray, the name T. polygamuin. This is an outline statement 

 only, and appertains to the history of the nomenclature of 

 this type in our own country more particularly ; but the 

 aggregate species had been studied with care nowhere but in 

 Europe ; and we shall have to look to one of the greatest 

 botanists of Europe to see what the real reasons w^ere for sup- 

 pressing Linnaeus' trivial name T. Cor?iuti. Asa Gray tells 

 us (Syn. Fl. I, 18) that the necessity of this had been sug- 

 gested by De Candolle (1818). This eminent botanist appears 

 to have been the first to critically examine the page and plate 

 of Cornutus, and in doing this he could but discover that both 

 plate and description apply to no other plant but the Old 

 World T. aquilegifoliian. T. Canadensc oi Cornutus, Tourne- 

 fortius and others, as well as T. Cornuti^ Linn., were but 

 synonyms of T. aquilcgifolium, and all must be suppressed. 



