6 Rhodora [JANUARY 
As indicated by the Species Plantarum Linnaeus intended as his 
Comarum palustre! the common European plant. He gave no de- 
scription but cited numerous previous works, Flora Lapponica, ete., 
the Quinquefolium palustre rubrum of Bauhin and the Pentaphyllum 
palustre of Cordus, and gave the habitat “in Europae uliginosis." 
Subsequent European students of the group, such as Lehmann and 
Wolf, have accepted as typical Potentilla palustris the common plant 
of Eurasia (fig. 1) and northern North America, with leaflets oblong- 
lanceolate, green and glabrous or merely puberulent above, glaucous 
and glabrous or merely puberulent beneath,? and have recognized a 
single notable variety, var. villosa (Pers.) Lehm., a plant figured by 
Plukenet and said to come from Sweden and Ireland. 
In 1836, however, Rafinesque,’ taking up the Linnean genus Coma- 
rum “(or Pancovia or Potentilla)" said: “I can increase it to 3 
Species; all in my Autikon. Only one was known," and treated 
* Comarum (or Pancovia or Potentilla)” palustre as a strictly Old 
World plant, described “fol. pinnatis"; separated the “C. palustre 
of all the American botanists!” as “ Comarum (Pane. Pot.) digitatum,” 
«€ TER digitatis"; and described as another new species “Comarum 
(Pane. Pot.) angustifolium,” “fol. pinnatis,.... foliolis 5 cuneatis 
angustis" from “Oregon or N. W. Amer.” In the Autikon Botanikon, 
in 1840, Rafinesque somewhat modified his treatment, coining the 
name C. tomentosum for Persoon's C. palustre, 8 villosum; altering the 
range of his C. angustifolium to read “Origon and Boreal America, 
Ohio: very peculiar, leaves narrow smooth, fl. small &c."; and pub- 
lishing a new C. angustifolium, “Var. parvifolium Raf. folioles 5-7 
small smooth cuneate or elliptic, petiols membranose, flowers very 
small, branches uniflore; Labrador, 3 to 10 inches high, folioles less 
than uncial.” 4 
More recently, in the North American Flora, Rydberg? has stated 
that the typical form of the species, with “leaflets . . . .elliptic or oval,” 
occurs in “Northern and subalpine Europe and Asia; also subarctic 
and arctic America, from Greenland and Labrador to Alaska," while 
1 L. Sp. Pl. 502 (1753). 
?''Foliola...oblongo-lanceolata, acute-serrata, superiore facie laete-viridia, dorsa 
glaucescentia, venosa’’ — Lehm, Mon. Pot. 53 (1820); ''foliola...oblongo-lanceolata 
acute et aequaliter serrata, supra viridia, subtus glauca, utrinque vel subtus tantum 
puberula’’ — Wolf, Mon. Pot. 75 (1908). 
* Raf. Fl. Tell. pt. ii. 55, 56 (1836). 
4 Raf. Aut. Bot. 170 (1840). 
5 Rydb. N. A. FI. xxii. 355 (1908). 
