246 Rhodora [DECEMBER 
cies. Several good judges at both New York and Cambridge were 
asked their opinion of the species figured, and all without hesitation 
called it Y. Zeconteana or V. amoena. 
Moreover, in Willdenow's description particular emphasis seems 
to be laid on the fact that the petals are all beardless. This is 
strictly true of Viola amoena ; but the lateral petals of the so-called 
V. blanda have almost always more or less of a beard. The upper 
petals Willdenow thus describes: *bina superiora lanceolata obtusa 
alba." This, might answer for the long narrow upper petals, rounded 
at the tip, of V. amoena; but it is decidedly inapplicable to those of 
the so-called V. b/anda, which are broadly obovate or even orbicular. 
Much as we may regret the necessity, the name V. blanda must be 
restored to its original application, displacing V. amoena and the 
later synonyms. 
This forces us to find another name for the species that we have 
been wrongly calling V. //anda ; and fortunately there is an old name 
of Banks's that seems to be available and not altogether infelicitous. 
In the Prodromus, i. 295 (1824), under Banks's manuscript name 
“Viola rotundifolia, B. pallens,’ DeCandolle describes a sheet of 
specimens collected by Banks in Labrador. This type is now in the 
Banks Herbarium at the British Museum, and was studied and pho- 
tographed by Mr. Fernald in 1903. He then felt no hesitation in 
pronouncing the plants to be what we have been calling V. blanda, 
the smallest of our white violets. Two excellent photographs of this 
sheet show seven plants, each with one flower and two or three 
leaves, and strongly support Mr. Fernald's conviction as to the spe- 
cies here represented. The plant is certainly not the true V. banda 
above discussed; and it is extremely doubtful if the latter species 
reaches as far to the north as Labrador. In the mountains of Ver- 
mont the traditional V. blanda ascends some 2000 feet higher than 
the true Y. blanda (V. amoena). 
But in this group of plants there is another though quite different 
source of confusion, —the presence of a distinct but heretofore 
unrecognized species, that in its vernal stages has commonly passed 
as “ V. blanda” (Am. authors), and in its summer stages as V. amoena 
l This is stated in three places: (1) “petalis imberbibus ”; (2) “petalis albis 
omnibus interne laevibus"; (3) “a Viola cucullata, obliqua et nonnullis aliis 
novis speciebus Americae borealis, petalis lateralibus basi glabris nec barbatis... 
diversa.” 
