418 MR. C. €. LACAITA : A REVISION OF 
son to Linneus in 1760. Therefore Linnzeus cannot have seen this specimen 
when he wrote the diagnosis of lusitanicum for the Sp. Pl. of 1753, but that 
he saw it afterwards is proved by the name lusitanicum being underscored in 
his copy of the twelfth edition of the ‘Systema Nature’ of 1767*. The 
name lusitanicum now on the sheet was written by Linn. fil., who ought to 
have known what his father meant, notwithstanding that Sir J. E. Smith has 
pencilled a note of interrogation after the name. The specimen is unmis- 
takably /. Broteri. It consists of two leaves measuring respectively 45 x 8 
and 30x 14 cm., covered with rather sparse soft hairs, which on the upper 
surface only are tubercle-borne. There are no stem-leayes. ‘here is also 
the upper part of a fruiting stem, forming a panicle 15 x 14 em., composed 
of six cincinni, erecto-patent and very much elongated in the fruiting stage, 
the uppermost springing close together so as to give to the whole a false 
appearance of being corymbose. Bach cincinnus is 10-15 em. long, with 
30-40 or more small, almost sessile flowers. The bracts are lanceolate, equal 
to or shorter than the calyces, of which the teeth are lanceolate, acute, 5-7 mm. 
long. The whole inflorescence is rough with white setaceous hairs on white 
tubercles. Very few corollas remain, but they have evidently been small, 
subregular, and only slightly dilated at the throat. They are too much 
withered for the character and length of the stamens to be defined. Owing 
to the advanced stage in which it has been gathered the elongated, erecto- 
patent cincinni look very unlike those of examples in an early flowering 
stage. But this change of superficial appearance occurs in most species. 
Are we then to decide that Æ. Broteri is the species indicated by Linnzeus 
under the name lusitanicum, which therefore must be used for it? Surely 
we must, seeing that this is the plant referred to in the two synonyms and 
represented by the fine specimen in the herbarium, notwithstanding :— 
(a) the name on the specimen not being in Linnzeus’s own hand, 
(^) the phrase “ corollis stamine longioribus," 
(c) the baseless opinion of Brotero that by lusitanicum Linnzus meant 
a form of vulgare, 
(d) the opinion of Link, based on a mistake, that the lusitanicum of 
Linnzus was £F. plantagineum, 
(e) the erroneous statement of Link and Lehmann, uncritically accepted 
by later authors, that Linnzeus’s herbarium contains no specimen of 
E. lusitanicum. 
The objections shall be taken in order :— 
(a) That Linnæus did not himself write the name lusitanicum on the sheet 
with the specimen may have been due to his old doubt as to the identity of 
Royen’s and Tournefort’s synonyms, indicated by the query appended to the 
* See Dr, Daydon Jackson’s ‘Index to the Linnean Herbarium,’ p, 8, as to Linnæus’s use 
of underscoring. 
