1907] Brainerd,— Older Types of North American Violets 95 
is therefore surprising that it was so constantly misinterpreted or 
ignored, until correctly understood in the Illustrated Flora (1897). 
The description calls for a stemless, violet-flowered plant, with cordate 
leaves pubescent beneath and on the petioles. The only two species 
in eastern North America combining these characters are the one to 
which Dr. Britton has applied the name V. sororia, and the northern 
V. septentrionalis. The latter is quite unlikely to have reached 
Berlin; and furthermore its vernal leaves in outline and aspect do not 
answer as well to the Willdenow plate, as do those of the Britton plant. 
The confusion of the older botanists regarding Willdenow's V. sororia 
may be due in part to a palpable blunder in his description, for he 
calls the spurred petal bearded, and the lateral petals smooth. I 
say ‘palpable blunder’ for there is not a known violet in eastern 
North America that bears such a flower. Through some error of 
observation or of memory (not without parallel) Willdenow located 
the beard on the wrong petal. 
The first misapplication of the name V. sororia was made by Nut- 
tall, who quotes it as a synonym of V. villosa Walt. Nevertheless. 
after describing his V. villosa var. cordifolia, he somewhat inconsist- 
ently remarks, that this latter “is decidedly the V. sororia figured in 
the Hortus Berolinensis, although the leaf is said to be pubescent 
beneath instead of above." Schweinitz, Torrey and LeConte per- 
petuate in one form or the other the error of Nuttall. 
The genuine V. sororia Willd. was, however, too common a plant 
not to have been noticed under some name. The oldest synonym 
is the V. asarifolia of Pursh This was based upon a plant of low 
rich woods, collected in the Carolinas by Catesby in 1724,— still to 
be seen at Oxford in hb. Sherard. A tracing made by Prof. Fernald 
shows it to be a summer specimen having large tall leaves, and bear- 
ing cleistogamous flowers and an immature capsule on peduncles 
less than two inches long. It is so unlike the form ordinarily seen in 
vernal flower, that Pursh, though recognizing V. sororia Willd., makes 
the Catesby plant another species;— a blunder made by more than 
one botanist, who has thought to get an adequate notion of a violet 
by studying it only when in petaliferous flower. Pursh adds the 
naive remark, “I have seen this species several times in Virginia, 
but generally without flowers; which has been the reason that no 
specimen was in my collection." 
1 Supplement to Flora, ii. 734, 1814. 
