PSEDERA. 219 
the strongly cordate base, not cucullate, the broad lobes meeting 
or nearly meeting, but plane, not involute, the whole margin 
remotely and lightly crenate: peduncles unusually stout and 
fleshy, their bractlets supramedial, alternate: sepals much 
elongated, lance-linear, lightly serrulate: corolla deep-blue, its 
' width ? inch or more, and greater than its length, the odd petal 
being much shorter than the others, all obtuse. Summer state 
of plant not enlarged, its apetalous flowers few, short-peduncled, 
their capsules not seen; the one latest petaliferous on each plant 
producing a small capsule with few seeds. 
This handsome violet of open grassy places about springs 
and along streamlets flowing from springs, was first brought to 
my notice about five years since, the specimens having been 
brought in quantity from a locality at the sources of Rock 
Creek, just outside the District of Columbia, in Maryland, I 
then saw that it was new, but declined at that time to give any 
account of it. This season I have chanced tocome upon exten- 
sive masses of it, growing amid grasses, sedges and some hydro- 
philous moss, on a tributary of Rock Creek within the District, 
and having studied it x sítu to my satisfaction, have decided to 
give ita name and diagnosis. It was in perfect petaliferous 
flower 7 May, 1906. 
Parthenocissus a Synonymn. 
Among the numerous medley genera of Linnaeus not many 
are more impossible than his Hedera, composed as it is of 
two species, one the Old World ivy, the other an American 
grape. Tournefort more than a half-century earlier had deter- 
mined Cornut’s five-leaved ivy to be a grape and not an ivy, and 
had named it Vitis guingucfolia; and this Tournefortian dis- 
posal of the species met with almost universal approval for 
nearly a century, notwithstanding Linnaeus’ retrograde proposi- 
tion; for after 1753 Adanson, Moench, Gaertner and others 
retained the Virginia Creeper in Vitis, while only Crantz and 
Miller stood by Linnaeus in calling it a Hedera. 
Necker, in 1790, appears to have been the first to indicate this 
shrub as the type of a proper genus. 
