[From the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 39 : S49"559- J 9 Nov x 9"-] 



Polycodium 



C. B. Robinson 



The statements by which Professor E. L. Greene* suggested 

 the resuscitation of Rafinesque's name require quotation in full, 

 as they bring up many points open to controversy. 



"We have in the Eastern and Southern United States two 

 groups of vacciniaceous shrubs either of which is at variance with 

 all genuine Vaccinium in two important points of floral structure. 

 The corollas in both groups are campanulate, while in both 

 Vaccinium and Gaylussacia they are urceolate. The stamens also, 

 in these campanulate-flowered shrubs, are of a structure so 

 peculiar that, on the characters of this organ alone, a genus might 

 reasonably be established, were concomitant characters wanting. 

 Vaccinium and Gaylussacia are now everywhere admitted ^ as 

 distinct, yet, exclusive of the groups here under special notice, 

 there is not the slightest difference of floral structure between the 

 two. But these other shrubs depart widely from the characters of 

 both Vaccinium and Gaylussacia not only in their open-campanu- 

 late corollas, but in respect to their stamens, which organs are 

 doubly marked by extremely long and slender anther-tubes, and 

 two prominent horn-like projections on the back; so that nothing 

 approaching these characters is found in any other genera allied 



to Vaccinium. 



"Twice in the early part of the century, botanists of first-class 

 ability proposed the separation of these species from Vaccinium. 

 Rafinesque in 1818, not distinguishing generic differences between 

 those types represented by V. stamineum and V. arboreum respec- 

 tively — perhaps not even knowing V. arboreum — proposed the V. 

 stamineum group for a genus under the beautifully appropriate 

 name of Polycodium; and Nuttall in 1843, ignoring Rafinesque's 

 earlier proposition — just as later pretenders to taxonomic autoc- 

 racy suppressed Nuttall's work— sought to establish a new genus 

 Batodendron with V. arboreum as typical, and Picrococcus with V. 

 stamineum for its type. 



"The characters of the two genera are well indicated by 

 Nuttall, in the transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 

 with the exception of one new and most significant peculiarity of 

 the V. stamineum group which I alone seem to have observed. 



* Pittonia 3: 323- 1898. 



549 



