7 
Griccs: Species oF HELICONIA 655 
a “composite’’ to which different authors referred very different 
plants, and consequently has been a source of much difficulty and 
confusion. This confusion has continued to the present time, and 
the recent monographers have not cleared it away but have made 
their descriptions so general as to include most, though not all, of 
the various plants described in the places they cite. To determine 
what 1. Bihai really is and to limit the name to a single species 
is not an easy task, but it is necessary for any precision in dealing 
with it and the related species. In attempting to make such a de- 
termination we are aware of the great possibility of error, but we 
consider it less serious to commit a nomenclatorial blunder by ap- 
plying the name to the wrong plant than to make the taxonomic 
mistake of referring several species to one. Besides it is more 
likely that any nomenclatorial uncertainty will be removed, if it 
can be, after the species themselves are differentiated. 
For some reason Linnaeus in what is, for nomenclatorial pur- 
poses, the original description * in the ‘‘ Species Plantarum,”’ cited 
Plumier’s last species (variega/a) first. Were this determinable it 
would be the type of H. Bihai, but beyond the reference to the 
variegated branch-bracts we know nothing about it and there 
seems to be no way of finding out anything else. Therefore we 
reject this species from consideration and take up the next cited, 
one with scarlet bracts, which was Plumier’s first species. The 
early French writers that had access to Plumier’s manuscripts are 
united in considering that this was the species figured by Plumier 
and in calling it Heliconia Bihai. Their figures and descriptions 
are in substantial accord with his but add a great deal to them. 
Burmann, in 1756, published a plate from Plumier’s manuscripts 
showing the whole plant and the floral parts full size. The draw- 
ings of the flowers are almost identical with those published 
earlier by Plumier himself, and almost certainly came from the 
Same species. Plumier, in the earlier work, gave no hint as to 
which of the three species he was figuring, but the identity of his 
Bihat. 
* «* Musa spadice erecto. 
Bihai amplissimis foliis, florum vasculis variegatis. /um. gen. 50. 
Bihai. Ovid. /. 8, ¢. 9. [Should be lib. 7. cap. 9. —R. F. G.] 
B. Bihai amplissimis foliis, florum vasculis coccineis. Plum. gen. 50. 
y. Bihai amplissimis foliis, florum vasculis subnigris. Plum. gen. 50. 
flabitat in America calidiore.’’—L. Sp. Pl. 1043. 1753. 
