BOTANICAL HISTORY AND NOMENCLATURE OP SORGHUM. 41 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WRITERS. 



Sloane (1707) gives a description of the Guinea corn of Jamaica. 

 In this connection he supplements the synonymy given in his earlier 

 " Catalogue " by citations from subsequent authors. He states that 

 this form of sorghum was then in very general culture on that island, 

 as it probably was in others of the West Indies. From the brief de- 

 scription, the plant seems to be identical with the variety peculiar to 

 and extensively grown in many of the West Indian islands at the 

 present day under the same name, Guinea corn. It is almost certain 

 that this plant was brought from the west or Guinea coast of Africa 

 with some of the slaves, whose chief food-grain it had been in their 

 African home. It is discussed in this bulletin under the name Guinea 

 kafir (fig. 3, b) in the paragraph on the West Indies. 



Micheli (1729) proposed the generic name Sorgum for these plants 

 as segregates from the genus Milium of Tournefort. He did not, 

 however, describe any species in this connection, nor did he indicate 

 what plants of Tournefort should be included in his genus. The 

 name stands, therefore, as a nomen nudum. Tournefort in 1700 had 

 simply lumped sorghum with Panicum mil nice urn as milium, and cited 

 under it all the names given by the two Bauhins with some new ones 

 of his own, which are, however, not worthy of further attention. 



Linne (1737) transferred these plants to his recently erected genus 

 Holcus. The common form is treated as Holcus glumis glabris and 

 the white-seeded, or durra, variety from Arabia as Holcus glumis 

 villosis. For our purposes this work terminates what is called the 

 pre-Linnean period, the next botanical contribution of any great im- 

 portance being Linne's " Species Plantarum," wherein began in 1753 

 the general application of a binomial system of nomenclature for 

 plants. 



LINNEAN PERIOD, 175:! TO 1850. 



Throughout the Linnean period botanists treated the diverse forms 

 of this cultivated plant as botanical species. Nearly thirty species 

 were named and about sixty binomial combinations made. 



The Species of Linne and Forskal. 



Linne (1753) published two species of sorghum under his exceed- 

 ingly composite genus Holcus, namely, Holcus sorghum and H. sac- 

 ckaratus, adding thereto the wild species as II. halepensis. The cul- 

 tivated species were both from India. Under Holcus sorghum, de- 

 scribed as " glumis villosis seminibus aristatis," he evidently placed 

 the common European sorghum of earlier authors, since he makes his 

 Holcus glumis glabris of 1737 a synonym. The Arabian form with 

 fiat white seeds is not mentioned at all, either by name or in the syn- 

 onymy, though by inference it is included in this species. Holcus 



175 



