ANNALS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



I. — On Scrophularia aquatica of Linnaeus and Ehrhart. By 

 Charles Abbot Stevens, Esq., B.A., F.B.S.E.* 



[With a Plate.] 

 An examination, through the kindness of Professor Don, of the 

 specimens of Scrophularim in the Linnaean and Smithian Her- 

 baria has confirmed a suspicion I have for some time had, that 

 under the name of S, aquatica two distinct species have been 

 confounded by botanists : one, the original S, aquatica of Lin- 

 naeus ; the other the S. aquatica of Ehrhart^s ^ Plantae Offici- 

 nales/ Thus in his ' English Flora,' Sir J. E. Smith has com- 

 bined the characters of the two under that name ; his diagnosis, 

 which is merely a translation from that in Linn. ^ Sp. PL', be- 

 longing to the former plant, while to the latter his description 

 principally refers, — not entirely, as some of the characters of 

 S. aquatica, Linn, are mixed up in it. The fact of there being a 

 specimen of each of the two species on the same paper in his 

 Herbarium will account for the description having been thus 

 drawn up from their combined characters, as he evidently 

 considered the two as one species, and identical with S, aqua- 

 tica, Linn. 



By several German authors the plant of Ehrhart is described 

 under the name of /S. aquatica, while the true >S^. aquatica, 

 Linn, is described as another species under the name of S, 

 Balbisii, It seems not improbable that the combination into 

 one of the two species by the late possessor of the Linnaean 

 Herbarium may, for the very reason of that possession, have 

 been the cause of their mistake. 



The inspection during the last season of a great number of 

 specimens, amounting to not less than several hundred, of 

 S. aquatica, Linn, afforded me no instance of any variation in 

 the integrity of the staminodium ; nor have I ever seen any 

 specimen at all approaching ;S^. aquatica, Ehrh. in the inflo- 

 rescence or in general habit. There can, I imagine, be na 

 * Read to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Feb. 13, 1840. 



Ann, Nat, Hist, Vol. 5. No. 38. March 1840. b 



