1592 Leaflets of Philippine Botany [Vol. V, Art. 78 



The Linnaean names of the species of Dioscorea are very 

 confused. Linnaeus, with the touch of a master, defined t})e 

 genus, and brought together the species composing it: but 

 it otherwise fared badly at his hand. He applied the names 

 D. aculeata, D. triphylla, and D. sativa, now to one 

 species now to another; and the result is perplexing. His 

 D. aculeata of 1753 was a muddled drawing in Rheede^s 

 Hortus Malabaricus, a confusion of D. bulbifera with D. 

 Wallichii, but in 1754 he gave the name to the * ' Combiliuvi^ ' 

 of Rumpfs Herbarium Amboinense. In 1763 he returned to 

 Rheede's figure, but again in 1788 went back to Rumpfs. 

 The botanists who immediately followed him kept alive the 

 second view, which has never indeed been quite lost sight 

 of in the years to date. Discarding the muddled drawing 

 in the Hortus Malabaricus, we use the name "acuZeato" in 

 the way in which Linnaeus used it in 1754. 



la 1753 Linnaeus used the name *' triphylla^ ^ for a 

 plant which is no more than a condition of D. pentaphylla; 

 but in 1754 he used it for the Gadoeng of the Malays, as 

 satisfactorily figured by Rumpf. In 1763 he returned to his 

 first position, adding the remark that perhaps D. triphylla 

 might be no more than a variety of D. pentaphylla; but 

 in 1788 he came back to the second position. Jacquin and 

 Lamarck followed him in this second view, which, the first 

 use of the name being unwarranted, we regard as the one 

 justified . 



The name ^^ sativa'" was used first by Linnaeus for an 

 American plant which he found in the garden of Clifford. 

 Ehrhardt drew it for him adding the capsules from a dried 

 plant, as CUfford^s plant had not flowered. But he quoted 

 as being the same, a reference to the D. aculeata of the Old 

 World. The American plant is to be regarded as the original 

 D. sativa; but Linnaeus in the course of time added under it 

 no less than five other species, and his immediate followers 

 were so misled, as to add more: one of the species added 

 was D. hxdhifera. By reason of that, Bentham and some 

 other botanists have given the name "D. sativa" to D. 

 bulbifera: but fortunately there is no doubt regarding Linnaeus' 

 use of the name "bulbifera" which must be applied, as we 



