1918] Blake,— On some Species of Viburnum 13 
Rafinesque’s description reads only “Viburnum villosum; leaves 
ovate, serrated, hairy, umbell [sic] 5 fidous, few flowered. Grows in 
Pennsylvania.” ‘This description is unfortunately too brief and 
indefinite to exclude V. venosum (i. e., the true V. pubescens) or 
V. scabrellum (T. & G.) Chapm., both of which also occur in Pennsyl- 
vania, and the character “umbell 5 fidous” is one not known, at least 
normally, in any of these species, all of which have a consistently 
7-rayed umbel. The plate to which reference has been made throws 
no further light on the question. It is a tracing, executed many years 
ago for Dr. Sereno Watson, of the unique proof of one (no. 17) of a 
series of plates intended to illustrate Rafinesque’s “Select New Plants 
of North America,” but lost in his perhaps fortunate shipwreck of 1815 
and consequently never published.! This tracing shows a plant with 
5-rayed short-villous umbel, few flowers, oval-ovate obtusish or acut- 
ish densely ciliolate leaves, short, ciliolate, estipulate petioles, and 
short-villous stem, and on the whole bears perhaps more resemblance 
to V. scabrellum than to V.“ pubescens.” However, as it seems impos- 
sible ever to identify it with any certainty, the name had best be 
dropped entirely, and with it the V. Rafinesquianum of Schultes, 
which rests directly on it. 
No other name seems to have been given to any form of the short- 
petioled plant? until 1911, by which date the name V. pubescens had 
become firmly fixed by universal usage on the very short-petioled 
and pubescent form of the East. In that year a form from Missouri, 
which had been distributed and also grown at the Arnold Arboretum 
under the name V. affine Bush, was briefly characterized by Schneider 
under that name in his Handbuch as a doubtfully distinct species, 
and was shortly after reduced by Rehder to a variety of V. pubescens 
(of authors), and distinguished by its somewhat longer petioles and less 
pubescent leaves. i 
Examination of all the material of the so-called V. pubescens at the 
Gray Herbarium and the Arnold Arboretum fully confirms Mr. 
Rehder’s view that two varieties of the old “V. pubescens” may be 
distinguished with fair clearness. One, with leaves rather densely 
soft-pubescent all over the under surface, between as well as on the 
1 An account of this collection of plates, by W. R. G[erard], will be found in Bull. Torr. 
Club xii. 37-38 (1885). 
2 The name Viburnum pubescens var. petiolum (sic) Fitzpatrick (T. Jy& M. F. L.), Proc. 
Iowa Acad. Sci. vii. 198 (1900), refers very clearly to V. molle Michx. (V. Demetrionis Deane & 
Robinson). 
