288 EL. Greene versus Asa Gray. | [ZOE 
which he and other so-called “authorities”? on West American botany have 
made scores and hundreds, do not come directly under my heading, being 
errors that did not go into print. The Old World Convolvulus to which Dr. 
Gray gave a new name, as a new species, and in the wrong genus at that, is 
. a grain field weed, as common in California as in Europe—C, pentapetaloides, 
.s 
Linn., which he named Breweria minima (Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 228). This 
error he some years afterwards discovered and corrected. But there is one 
seeming more inexcusable which has not yet been corrected, though it was 
detected by me while Dr. Gray was still living; for I was loath to call his 
attention to a mistake, the discovery of which by another would naturally 
be somewhat humiliating. I refer to a new name that he gave to a plant of 
such ancient and world-wide repute as Pennyroyal, the Mentha Pulegium of 
Linneus. In this error Dr. Kellogg, it must be admitted, led the way; for 
when the plant appeared to him he named it as a new Hedeoma, H, purpurea 
(Proc. Calif. Acad. v. 52). In working up the Labiate for the State Survey 
volumes, after having examined this plant minutely, Dr. Gray simply 
transferred it to the Californian genus Micromeria, where, as he remarks, it is 
“‘anomalous;’”’ and so it stands to-day in the Synoptical Flora, as A/icromeria 
purpurea, Gray. Itis abundant not only on that island in the San Joaquin 
River, whence Dr. Kellogg and Dr. Gray had it, but also in several parts of 
Middle California rather remote from that station; and not more than one 
species of mint, J/. piperita, has been more familiarly known in all countries. 
during many centuries. 
A dozen years ago I found by the wayside, in Berkeley, a Cichoriacea 
new to me, and of which no account was given in the State Survey volumes, 
or in any other American book; but, suspecting it of alien derivation, I 
soon found it to be Crepis virens, Linn., one of the most cosmopolitan 
members of its genus. But Dr. Gray twice mistook this plant for a new 
Species, assigning it two new names, one in each of two distinct genera. It 
is his Malacothrix crepoides (Pac. R. Rep. xii. 49), and Crepis Cooperi (Proc. 
Am. Acad. ix. 214); and it was a friendly fortune which permitted him to. 
make this correction of a humiliating two-fold error with his own pen. 
Even Malva parviflora was by this author new-named M. obtusa when first it 
went to him from California. : ; 
I am said to have given the new name Paronychia pusilla to an obscure 
weed of Southern Europe, of which the real name is Herniaria cinerea. It is 
the only instance in which I have honored an old weed with a new name; 
and as I have worked upon the Californian flora now nearly as many years 
as Asa Gray did, my record in this respect seems not likely to prove worse 
than his, to say the least. : 
The opening paragraph of Mr. Greene’s statement inigties 
what he knows to be untrue. The identification of Paronychia 
pusilla was made in the ‘ Botanical Writings of Edward IL. 
Greene,’’ published in Zoe for April. In the preparation of that 
