Still further Notes on the Agrimonies 



By Eugene P. Bicknell 



It. so happens that only now, some months after its publica- 

 tion, have I read in this journal Dr. Robinson's defense of his ex- 

 pressed views as to the names which should be used in our group 

 of agrimonies. Lest silence should be taken as giving assent, some 

 further words may here be said touching the nomenclatorial dis- 

 turbance which has developed around these modest plants. Let 

 not the time-honored name of their genus bear any such irreverent 

 modification as one of our British friends has ventured to sug- 

 gest (James Britten, Journal of Botany, 39 : 152). It is not easy 

 to discern any important reason why the discussion should be 

 modeled too sharply after a salient character of the plants them- 

 selves which, after all, are provided with hooked prickles only in 

 the beneficent way of nature. The third paper of the discussion 

 is stripped of all such armament and the reply it must elicit here 

 gladly follows its graceful lead. Nevertheless, a wide divergence 

 of view on the points at issue must still be expressed. 



Happily, the number of propositions at first in dispute are 

 already reduced since he has frankly admitted that the names 

 newly adopted for two of our species were incorrectly taken up 

 But it should not be left unsaid that the names since adopted for 

 these mistakenly substituted ones are equally ineligible for current 

 use inasmuch as they cannot justly be made to supplant the names 

 by which the plants in question were earlier distinguished. 



The matters remaining in dispute are primarily these : (i) The 

 right application of the name Agrimonia striata Michx. (2) The 

 identity of A. Brittoniana with A. pilosa Ledeb. (3) The identity 

 of A. hirsuta Muhl. (4) The status of distinctive names of species 

 first used in a varietal sense. 



1. Dr. Robinson argues that the A. striata Michx. is the 

 same as my A. Brittoniana, basing his contention on the orig- 



* Agrimonia platycarpa Walk, for A. mollis Britton, and A. microcarpa Wallr. for 



A. striata Michx. {A. glabra Muhl.). 



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