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The North American Species of Agrimonia. 
By EvuceEnE P. BICKNELL. 
(PLATES 282, 283.) 
Perhaps no one of our long-known plants has more effectually 
escaped a right understanding by botanists than the familiar 
Agrimony of the Eastern States, long current in local floras and 
text-books as Agrimonia Eupatoria LL. This name, it seems, has 
been doing duty since the beginning of American botany for a 
considerable gvoup of related species, of which at least five may now 
be clearly recognized. Nor is this all; for, as first shown by Dr. 
Britton (Bull. Torr. Club, 18: 366, 1891), the true Agrimonia fu- 
patoria is not known at all as an American plant and is very dis- 
tinct from that particular one of our native species which has been 
more especially referred to it. 
For the initial fault in this misunderstanding we must go back 
to “Species Plantarum,” wherein, under A. Eupatoria, we find the 
citation “Gron. Virg.,” although the inconsistency follows that 
the species is attributed to Europe only. Walter seems to have 
been the first of our writers to adopt the name definitively into 
the American flora (FI. Car. 1788), though it is not now possible to 
determine the exact sense in which he used it. And so with most 
subsequent authors the name as used has doubtless a composite 
signifjcance, though mainly intended to designate our most com 
mon and generally distributed species. 
Muhlenberg appears to have been the first to perceive that 
this plant was not identical with the European and he gave it its first 
distinctive appellation—Jzrsuza (Cat. 47, 1813). Muhlenberg, in- 
deed, seems to have better understood our group of species than 
any subsequent writer except Wallroth, although he has been 
quite overlooked, and his name /irsuza, for our representative SP& 
cies, which it now becomes necessary to adopt, was afterwards in- 
dependently used by Torrey for a more hairy form of the same on 
plant. 
_ The genus Agrimonia, with especial reference to the North 
a American species, may be characterized as follows : a 
