356 safford: myrmecophilous acacias 



of Minerals : Fremontite = Natramblygonite withdraws the name 

 natramblygonite and substitutes for the mineral Na(A10H)P04 

 the name fre7nontite, after Fremont County, Colorado. 



BOTANY. — Acacia cornigera and its allies. William Edwin 

 Safford, Bureau of Plant Industry. 



In the course of a recent study of the myrmecophilous Acacias 

 in the U. S. National Herbarium the author encountered a nimiber 

 of undescribed species, some of which differ fundamentally from 

 any hitherto known. Much confusion was found also in the 

 existing classification of these plants, due largely to the fact that, 

 in describing species, the early authors had failed to designate 

 definite types. Thus, under Acacia cornigera (Mimosa cornigera 

 L.) several distinct species were cited by Willdenow as possible 

 synonyms, a fact which was recognized by Schlechtendal and 

 Chamisso in their study of certain specimens collected in Mexico 

 by Schiede. But these authors in turn included under their 

 Acacia sphaerocephala two, if not three species, one of which has 

 recently been described by Dr. Heinrich Schenck, of Darmstadt, 

 under the name Acacia veracruzensis. To make the confusion 

 still greater, Bentham in his Revision of the Mimoseae,^ "rede- 

 scribed" Acacia sphaerocephala and A. spadicigera but applied 

 these names to species quite distinct from those so-called by 

 Schlechtendal and Chamisso, while he dropped Acacia cornigera, 

 a species distinct from both A . sphaerocephala and A . spadicigera, 

 based upon a plant growing in the garden of George Clifford, 

 a specimen of which exists in the Linnaean Herbarium (no. 4). 

 The synonyms cited by Bentham are even more heterogeneous 

 than those of Linnaeus. 



The absence of flowers and fruits from the specimens of myr- 

 mecophilous Acacias described by the early botanists has been the 

 chief cause of the mistakes of later authors. Fortunately the 

 material in the U. S. National Herbarium includes specimens of 

 fruits as well as of flowers of nearly all the species. The present 

 writer recognized the fact that these fruits, which are of several 

 distinct forms, ofl"er a means of separating the species into a 



^ Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 30. 1875. 



