1909] The Ottawa Naturalist. 17 



CANADIAN SPECIES OF THALICTRUM. I. 



By Edward L. Greene. 



The Dominion of Canada being a northern country, at least 

 when compared with Mexico, or even the United States, our 

 census of Thalicirum species may as well begin with that northern- 

 most member of the genus T. alpinuni. 



That familiar books and lists are correct in attributing this 

 North- European species to Canada is a proposition that must, 

 first of all, be put to the usual test. An end ought to be made of 

 the practice of merely sul:scribing to, and reiterating the opinions 

 of past generations about the identity of our native plants. 



What is that Old World plant like which first obtained the 

 appellation Thahclrum alpinuml That is the first question; 

 and the next is: Have we in Canada anywhere any plant which 

 as to essential marks, responds to the original description of that 

 Old World type? Queries like these send us back in search of 

 the first beginnings of the history of Thalicirum alpinum; and 

 the excursion will prove an interesting and instructive one. 



Although the name now in vogue for the type dates from 

 Linnaeus, the thing itself was better known and had been better 

 described before that nomenclator Vvas born than it ever was by 

 him. The earliest records I have been able to find of the plant 

 show it to have been discovered originally in the moimtains of 

 the northern part of Wales. The discoverer was an Oxford 

 student, native of Wales, Edward Lloj^d by name, the same to 

 whom Salisbury, more than two centuries after Lloyd's death, 

 dedicated the liliaceous genus Lloydia. 



The discoverer brought roots of the plant to Oxford, where 

 they were said to be flourishing at the time when the first de.scrip- 

 tion of the species was published, that is, in the year 1699.* 

 Lloyd himself had named his new plant Thalictruni montanum 

 minimum praecox joliis splendentihus ; and it is hardly possible to 

 indicate the essential peculiarities of the species more clearly 

 than was thus done by Lloyd more than two centuries since in 

 those six words. As compared with all other members of the 

 genus as then known, this was alpine, was diminutive, very 

 early flowering, and had a polished or shining green foliage. 

 Bobart, in the place of Morison's Historia cited below, in a very 

 full and admirable description (containing about a hundred 

 words), says that the leaves are as shining as if oil had run over 

 the surface of them. This, however, only of the upper face, the 

 lower being pale and dull, he sa3"S. 



Bobart, in Moris. Hist. PI. III. 325. 



