What is Prunus insititia? 



By P. A. Rydberg 



In the February number of the Botanical Gazette Prof. Waugh 

 says : " I am somewhat at a loss to understand the criticism which 

 Dr. Rydberg offers in the December Gazette upon my conclusions 

 regarding Primus insititia Linn, as set forth in the Gazette of last 

 June. He says : ' If Professor Waugh had said that P. insititia is 

 the same as P. domestica damascena * * * I would have been the 

 last to criticise/ This is precisely what I did say ; and it is a con- 

 clusion upon which I still insist." 



Prof. Waugh intentionally or unintentionally has omitted to cite 

 the reasons that I gave for my statement. I added in my article in 



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the December Gazette : " I have not the means to disprove the 

 former/ ' With the facilities that are afforded me by the combined 

 libraries of Columbia University and the New York Botanical 

 Garden and one of the largest herbaria found in America, I find 

 myself unable to undertake the task, for it would require fieldvvork 

 done in Europe and access to all the literature on the subject. Prof. . 

 Waugh dared with much less facilities than I have to decide, as he 

 says himself, ' that there is no such species as P. insititia/ notwith- 

 standing the fact that nearly all European botanists hold a different . 

 opinion. The existence or non-existence of P. insititia as a species, 

 and whether P. insititia and P. domestica damascena are the same or 

 not, are questions that should be left to European botanists, who 

 are much more able to settle these questions. I think that it is 

 pretentious for an American to undertake such a work. American 

 botanists have puzzles enough of their own to solve, so that they 

 had better allow the Europeans to take care of their own flora. 

 This is in plain words my criticism. 



By leaving out initials, I have had the misfortune to be mis- 

 interpreted. When I said : " Koch, the acknowledged authority 

 in Germany, recognized it," I meant, of course, William Daniel 

 Joseph Koch, the great botanist, and not Karl Koch, the dendrol- 

 ogist. While the latter, perhaps, is better known in America on 

 account of our lack of good general dendrologies, he has never 



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