Vol. 35, pp. 63-72 March 20, 1922 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



MUHLENBERG ON PLANTS COLLECTED IN THE 

 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA REGION ABOUT 1809. 



BY W. L. McATEE. 



In the year 1809 no list of plants of the District of Columbia 

 region had yet been published, nor, so far as we know, had any 

 society been organized for the study of plants. Data on plant 

 collections of that period are of considerable value, therefore, 

 and it is of interest to know that at least three amateurs were 

 collecting here at that day and sending their plants to the lead- 

 ing American botanist of the time, Dr. Henry Muhlenberg.i 



These facts appear from a letter^ of Muhlenberg's addressed 

 to "Dr. John Ott, at Georgetown, Columbia D., " the botanical 

 matter in which is as follows : 



Lancaster, Sept. 25, 1809. 

 Dear Sir: 



I am ever so much obliged to you for this magnificent package of plants 

 and also to the other gentlemen who have contributed to it. I was very 

 glad indeed, and all my wishes have been satisfied. I was short of some 

 plants which Clayton described in his excellent Flora Virginica. Some of 

 them I found in the present collection, and if you continue in this way I am 

 in hopes to have them all in the end. The section around Columbia is par- 

 ticularly rich in rare plants. I regret that the plants have not been pro- 

 vided with numbers. By enumerating them the correspondence regarding 

 the same is very much facilitated. The nomenclature is clearer and the 

 fixing of new and unknown plants will be more intelligible. I have been 

 looking them all over, but only superficially. When I put them into my 

 herbarium I shall make a thorough examination of the same. I shall 

 specify below the nomenclature just the same way as I have put it into my 

 diary according to my first examination. Such as are new to me and 

 of which I am not sure I have marked with a cross. ^ Of these I would like 



iThis is the form of his name on the title page of his pioneer Catalogus Plantarutn 

 Americae Septentrionalis, 1813, and probably should be adopted as the well considered 

 preference of his mature years rather than the baptismal name of Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst 

 given in encyclopedias and the like. 



2The body of this letter is in German script which was translated for me, very obligingly, 

 by Dr. Carlo Zeimet of the U. S. Bureau of Entomology. The letter, in my possession, was 

 purchased through a book-dealer, from an autograph collection marketed in Philadelphia. 



sAsterisks have been substituted. 



14— Proc. Biol. See. Wash., Vol. 35, 1922. (63) 



