OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 227 



VitacecE. 



AMPELOPSIS, Michx. p. p., Torr. & Gray. Landukia and Par- 

 thenocissus, Planchon, Ampelid. in Mon. Phan. Prodr. v. 446, 447. 

 Those who can adopt all or most of the ten genera of Planchon's Ampe- 

 lidece may with him reserve the name of Ampelopsis for the first and 

 third of Michaux's species ; but if they follow the rule of priority, and 

 thiuk that names given by Rafinesque as late as the year 1830 must 

 needs be adopted, they will take up his name of Quinaria instead of 

 Planchon's new-coined name of Parthenocissus, the homonym of Lou- 

 reiro being a synonym of an older genus. But I am quite unable to dis- 

 tinguish the A. cordata and the A. bipinnata of Michaux, taken along 

 with the tetramerous Cissus (Ampelopsis, Planch.) orientalis, from the 

 genus Cissus. The Ampelopsis quinquefolia, Michx., remains as the 

 proper representative of the genus, and should preserve the name. 

 This was the course taken, in 1838, in Torrey and Gray's Flora of 

 North America, where the genus was first rightly established, and in 

 the Genera Illustrata, where the peculiarities of the disk and of the 

 tendrils were insisted on ; and this generic name has adhered to the 

 Virginia Creeper, and to the Japanese and Indian species which go 

 with it. Moreover, Planchon's Parthenocissus appears to be just the 

 same as his Landukia; for A. Landuk, as described by Miquel, and 

 as well as I can make out on a scanty specimen, has just such a disk, 

 or what answers to disk, as has A. tricuspidata Thus we have a 

 genus well marked by habit, by its peculiar disciferous tendrils for 

 climbing, and by the adnate thickening of base of ovary in place of the 

 free or partly free torus-disk of the other Ampelidece. It may still be 

 questioned whether the mass of Ampelidece can be definitely separated 

 from Vitis, and into how many genera divided ; but surely Ampe- 

 lopsis, with the Virginia Creeper as the type, must be admitted as 

 a good genus. 



