288 E. L. Gi'eene versus Asa Gray. [zoe 



which he aud other so-called " authorities " on West American botany have 

 made scores and hundreds, do not come directly under my heading, being 

 errors that did not go into print. The Old World Convolvulus to which Dr. 

 Gray gave a new name, as a new species, and in the wrong genus at that, ia 

 a grain field weed, as common in California as in Europe — C. pentapetaloides^ 

 I^inn., which he named Brewcria minima (Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 228). This 

 error he some years afterwards discovered and corrected. But there is one 

 seeming more inexcusable which has not yet been corrected, though it was 

 detected by me while Dr. Gray was still living; for I was loath to call his 

 attention to a mistake, the discovery of which by another would naturally 

 be somewhat humiliating. I refer to a new name that he gave to a plant of 

 such ancient and world-wide repute as Pennyroyal, the Mentha Pulegium of 

 Linnaeus. In this error Dr. Kellogg, it must be admitted, led the way; for 

 when the plant appeared to him he named it as a new ffcdeo/na, H. purpurea 

 (Proc. Calif. Acad. v. 52). In working up the Labiatte for the State Survey 

 volumes, after having examined this plant minutely, Dr. Gray simply 

 transferred it to the Californian genus Micromeria, where, as he remarks, it is 

 " anomalous; " and so it stands to-day in the vSynoptical Flora, as Micromeria 

 purpurea. Gray. It is abundant not only on that island in the vSan Joaquin 

 River, whence Dr. Kellogg and Dr. Gray had it, but also in several parts of 

 Middle California rather remote from that station; and not more than one 

 species of mint, M. piperita, has been more familiarly known in all countries- 

 during many centuries. 



A dozen years ago I found by the wayside, in Berkeley, a Cichoriacea 

 new to me, and of which no account was given in the State Survey volumes,. 

 or in any other American book; but, suspecting it of alien derivation, I 

 soon found it to be Crcpis rirens, Linn., one of the most cosmopolitan 

 members of its genus. But Dr. Gray twice mistook this plant for a new 

 species, assigning it two new names, one in each of two distinct genera. It 

 is his Malacothrix crepoides (Pac. R. Rep. xii. 49), and Crcpis Coopcri (Proc. 

 Am. Acad. ix. 214); and it was a friendly fortune which permitted him to 

 make this correction of a humiliating two-fold error with his own pen. 

 Even Malva parviflora was by this author new-named M. obtusa when first it 

 went to him from California. 



I am said to have given the new name Paronychia pusilla to an obscure 

 weed of Southern Europe, of which the real name is Herniaria cinerea. It is 

 the only instance in which I have honored an old weed with a new name; 

 and as I have worked upon the Californian flora now nearly as many years 

 as Asa Gray did, my record in this respect seems not likely to prove worse 

 than his, to say the least. 



The opening paragraph of Mr. Greene's statement implies 

 what he knows to be untrue. The identification of Pa7'07iychi(t 

 pusilla was made in the "Botanical Writings of Edward L. 

 Greene," published in Zoe for April. In the preparation of that 



