VERNONIA NOVEBORACENSIS. IRON-WEED; FLAT-TOP. I 23 



zontal tendency, in which case a whole string of flowers is 

 formed on the upper surface of each. It was this formation, 

 probably, which suggested the name of Flat-Top. Iron-Weed, 

 however, is much more common, and will probably prevail in 

 the end. 



Botanically, our Vernouia Novcboraccnsis offers a good deal 

 of interest. Although the plant has been long known to bota- 

 nists, its name Vernouia is nevertheless of comparatively modern 

 origin, having been given to the genus (in 1791) by Schreber, 

 who was the editor of one of the editions of the works of Linnaeus. 

 It commemorates the labors of William Vernon, an English 

 botanist, who came to America in company with Krieg, a Ger- 

 man, and made collections, chiefly in Maryland, towards the end 

 of the seventeenth century. Vernon, however, is not specially 

 connected with this genus, so far as we know, and the honor 

 conferred on him by Schreber was simply intended as an ac- 

 knowledgment of the general services he had rendered to botany 

 in makin"' his American collections. 



Linnx'us regarded our plant as a species of Scrratula. Refer- 

 ring to this supposed relationship, Nuttall writes in 1S27: " Re- 

 lated' to the thistle, through the medium of the very proximate 

 genus Serratula, is that of Vernouia, peculiarly American. . . . 

 Besides the generic character derived from the calyx, which is 

 that of Serratula, the stigma, as in Liatris, is bifid; but the 

 most decided trait of l^crnonia is in the existence of a double 

 pappus, the exterior short and chaffy in some degree, and the 

 interior capillary." The genus remarkably illustrates the prog- 

 ress which has been made in our knowledge of plants. When 

 Nuttall published his " Genera of North American Plants," 

 he took occasion to say that there were then about twenty spe- 

 cies of Vernonia known, and we have just seen that he looked 

 upon the genus as "peculiarly American." But only ten years 

 later, in 1836, when the genus was worked up for De Candolle's 

 " Prodromus," no less than two hundred and ninety species were 

 named and described, many of them being natives of all parts of 



