66 | Rhodora [APRIL 
Gratiola officinalis B. carolinensis Pers. Syn. i. 14 (1805), based on 
G. officinalis Michx. FI. i. 6 (1803) (not L.), which is G. neglecta, is 
quoted by authors as a binomial and attributed to Persoon, but was 
first published as such by Pursh (FI. i. 12 (1814)) in synonymy under 
G. officinalis, and consequently cannot be taken up for the species. 
11. Rhinanthus virginicus L. Sp. ii. 603 (1753).! (Gerardia vir- 
ginica (L.) BSP., as to syn. only.) Clayton 488, sole type of this 
species, now in the British Museum, is not the smooth and glaucous 
G. virginica of our manuals, but the puberulous species which in the 
Synoptical Flora (ii. pt. 1. 291 (1878)) is called Gerardia flava L., and 
in Britton & Brown’s Illustrated Flora (ed. 2. iii. 206 (1913)) Dasy- 
stoma flava (L.) Wood. The specimen in the Linnaean Herbarium 
under Rhinanthus virginicus, which has been the cause of some confu- 
sion, is a South American plant received from Escallon (not before 
1776, according to B. D. Jackson), which has been identified by Ben- 
tham with some doubt (in DC. Prod. x. 558 (1846)) as Lamourouxia 
serratifolia HBK. As this specimen did not constitute an element 
of the species as originally published, its exact identity is obviously 
of no importance in the disposition of the name Rhinanthus virginicus. 
Attention must be called here to the century-old but erroneous 
reference, originating doubtless in some confusion of specimens which 
cannot now be traced, of Rhinanthus virginicus to the synonymy of 
the glaucous plant known to the older authors as Gerardia quercifolia 
Pursh, Fl. ii. 423. t. 19 (1814). The latter name well exemplifies a 
class of names for which I have recently proposed the designation 
nomina legitimata (Contr. Gray Herb. N. S. no. lii. 51 (1917)), — it 
having been based on a description belonging to one species and a 
synonym belonging to another, and afterward restricted by authors to 
the plant described to the exclusion of the synonym. It seems now 
impossible to discover the error by which Pursh and Bentham (in 
DC. Prod. x. 520 (1846)), and subsequently Gray (Syn. FI. ii. pt. 1. 
291 (1878)) and other authors, including Pennell (Bull. Torr. Club xl. 
409 (1913)), were led to refer the Clayton specimen, and consequently 
Rhinanthus virginicus L., to the glaucous species, but in any case the 
fact remains that Clayton 488, basis of the Gronovian name, is not 
that species but is the puberulous plant almost universally called 
Gerardia flava or Dasystoma flava. 
1 Rhinanthus virginicus. 
“5. RHINANTHUS corollis fauce patente, foliis sinuato dentatis. Gron. virg. 168. 
“ Habitat in Virginia.” 
