Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 19. January, 1917. No. 217. 
STATICE IN NORTH AMERICA. 
S. F. BLARE. 
Like its near relative Limonium, the genus Statice! (Armeria 
Willd.) is one of which the taxonomic treatment has been subject to 
great diversity of opinion, Boissier in 1848 having enumerated fifty- 
two species, all of which Otto Kuntze in 1891 proposed to reduce to 
one. The several pre-linnaean species were lumped by Linnaeus in 
the Species Plantarum into one, Statice Armeria, the diagnosis of which 
(“scapo simplice capitato, foliis linearibus”) might even today almost 
be taken as a generic character. Miller in 1768 and Link in 1801 
recognized several European species, and Willdenow in 1809 had nine 
species of the genus. 
In 1814 Pursh ? recorded Statice Armeria as growing “on rocks near 
the sea-shore: Pensylvania to Virginia. July, Aug. v. v.” Torrey? 
soon after remarked that Pursh had “made some mistake respecting 
the habitat, as there is no ‘sea-shore’ to Pennsylvania,” and, as 
Pursh never visited any region in America where the Thrift grows as a 
native, it is clear that his “ v[idi] v[ivam]” was based either on some 
misapprehension or on garden specimens, perhaps escaped. The 
species was rightly noted by Gray ‘ in the first edition of the Manual 
1 The reason for the use of Statice L. emend. Mill. in place of Armeria, already explained in 
my revision of American Limonium in Ruopora xviii. 55-56 (1916), may be repeated here. 
Linnaeus’s Statice included the two groups, but he expressly noted the distinctions of Statice 
and Limonium in his observations under the genus, and this action must be taken as indicat- 
ing the species with rounded heads as the typical group of the genus, and hence as that one 
for which the name must be retained, in accordance with Article 45 of the International 
Rules. 
2 FI. Am. Sept. i. 212 (1814). 
3 Fl. N. & Mid. U. S. i. 329 (1824). 
* Man. ed. 1. 280 (1848). 
