Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 16. July, 1914. No. 187. 
THE EARLIEST NAME OF THE SNOWBERRY. 
SipnEY F. BLAKE. 
For more than a century the ornamental shrub cultivated in gar- 
dens under the name of Snowberry has been almost universally known 
by the name Symphoricarpos racemosus given it by Michaux ! in 1803. 
Nevertheless the species had been described by Linnaeus ? half a cen- 
tury before in the first edition of the Species Plantarum as Vaccinium 
album, a name based solely on specimens collected by Kalm in Penn- 
sylvania and preserved in the Linnaean Herbarium and in the British 
Museum. The specific name and character remained unchanged 
through the various editions of the Species Plantarum, and the 
Linnaean diagnosis is repeated without remark in the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth editions of the Systema. Meanwhile La- 
marck? in 1783 took up the name for the plant now known as 
Vaccinium canadense Richardson,‘ of which he was the first to publish 
a description. Pursh® described under the same name a form of 
Vaccinium stamineum L., and was followed in this error by Sprengel ? 
in the sixteenth edition of the Systema. Then in 1834 G. Don,’ ap- 
1 Mx. Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 107 (1803). 2? L. Sp. P1. i. 350 (1753). 
3 Lam. Ency. i. 73 (1783). 
4 Commonly accredited to ‘‘Kalm ex Richardson," but the original description, as 
well as the type specimens in the British Museum, clearly shows that Kalm had 
nothing to do with the name. V. vacillans ‘‘Kalm ex Torr.” is in somewhat similar 
case; as shown by Britten (Journ. Bot. xlii. 55 (1905)), Kalm, although quoted as its 
author by Torrey in the original publication, had no connection whatever with the 
name, Solander, who was not mentioned by Torrey and so cannot be quoted as author 
of the species, having been the real name of the plant, which should be called V, 
vacillans [‘‘vaccillans’’] Torr. 
5 Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 162 (1814). 6 Spreng. Sys. ed. 16. ii. 210 (1825). 
7G. Don, Gen. Hist. iii. 448, 853 (1834). 
