90 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



Michaux,* and A. nigrum Michaux, f.f If, as is now 

 generally done, we take Walter's Acer Carolinianum \ to be 

 the red maple, these are the only published names applicable 

 to the eastern sugar maple, aside from the recent varietal 

 and form names of Pax and Schwerin. 



Unfortunately, some doubt applies to both of the names 

 mccharum and barbatum. In advocating the restoration 

 of the Linnean name saccharinum for the silver maple, 

 Professor Sargent § considered it necessary to exclude 

 Marshall's name for the sugar maple, because he believed 

 that a name so nearly identical with saccharinum as is 



charum, could lead only to hopeless confusion, so 

 proposed to take up the name barbatum of Michaux 



pport 



Mar 



shall 



doubt as to what tree he really had in mind when he 

 described his Acer saccharum. While the description given 

 by Marshall is ambiguous, the green color of the flowers 

 (contrasted presumably with red), and the flowering " in 

 manner of the scarlet maple ' ' ( presumably referring to the 

 subsessile or umbellate cluster as contrasted with the elon- 

 gated inflorescence of the mountain and striped maples), 

 seem to me to confirm rather than render doubtful the con- 

 clusion that he had the sugar maple in mind. There is, in 

 fact, more doubt as to the plant intended by Michaux when 

 he described his Acer barbatum, for though the name 

 appears in most manuals of the thirty years succeeding its 

 publication, Pursh U is the only botanist of that time who 

 seems to have done more than copy or paraphrase a descrip- 

 tion of it, until Torrey and Gray** state that they found in 

 Barton's herbarium foliage specimens so named apparently 



* Fl. Bor. Amer. 1803, ii. 253. 



f Hist. Arb. (Sylva, ed. 1), 1810, ii. 238. 

 X Flora Caroliniana, 1788, 251. 

 § Garden and Forest, 1889, ii. 364. 

 || Garden and Forest, iv. 148. 



If Fl. (1814), i. 266, — with A. Carolinianum as a synonym. 



* Flora of North America, i. 249. 



3 



