136 
Bibliographical Notes on well known Plants,—l. 
By. EDWARD L. GREENE. 
LINNZA BOREALIS, Linn. Spec. Pl., 631. 
Beginners in botanical study are content with knowing that 
this or that species is called by a certain double name, as for ex- 
ample, Lzzn@a borealis. More advanced students in systematic 
botany become aware of the existence of such rather troublesome 
affairs as synonyms ; or, that very many well-known species have 
been placed under one generic name by one author, and under 
another by another author, until many of them have as many 
generic names as they have petals or stamens. At this stage of 
his progress the learner’s eyes are opened to see the advantage, 
if not indeed the necessity, -of appending to that binary name of 
a plant which is adopted, the name of the author of that name. 
But to the professional botanist synonyms are not altogether 
an annoyance. That our little rue anemone, which Linnzus 
called Anemone thalictroides, received three other generic names 
within much less than a century after Linnzeus, is a fact very sig- 
nificant and instructive. And that large class of facts of which 
this is but a ready example, indicates, first: that the system of 
botanical classification which has been in slow process of evolu- 
tion since centuries before Linnzus even, is still very far from 
perfect; and secondly, each different generic place which any 
species may have been assigned to, becomes valuable as an ex- 
_ pression of the individual opinion of the author who placed it 
there, regarding its affinities and its place in the system of plants. 
Therefore any treatise upon even local systematic botany which 
fails to present a full synonmy, however useful it may be to be- 
ginners, is unsatisfactory to the thorough botanist ; for he desires 
to know not only what the present writer thinks, but what others 
_ have thought about the species. 
The beautiful Linnea borealis, whose book-history I have 
chosen here to remark upon, has no long list of synonyms to be 
appended to it. And yet this plant was well known to botanists 
for more than a hundred years before Linnzus, but by a very 
different name from this, which was given to it in the middle of | 
the last century. It was first named, described and figured by 
Casper Bauhin in his Prodromus Theatri Botanici, published in 
