BOREALES—FLAVESCENTES 33 
the description agrees well with the plants of the middle west, which, 
like Rafinesque’s specimens, are hardly distinguishable from those of 
the east; the name (1836) can not displace the earlier flavescens; (4) 
V. leucarpum, with sessile oblong probably nerveless leaves, glomerate 
spikes with the flowers in twos or threes, and white berries,—from west- 
ern Louisiana and probably Texas. In the more elongated leaves this 
description agrees sufficiently well with the plant now known from Louis- 
iana, though scarcely separable from the narrower-leaved eastern form 
except in its fewer and more distant fruits. Dating from 1817, this 
name also is more recent than flavescens. The last of the Rafinesque 
species, (5) V. oblongifolium, with petiolate oblong or narrowly elliptical 
somewhat 3-nerved leaves, very short spikes, and solitary oblong 
““red””[?] berries, from Florida, ean scarcely be compared with anything 
known to me except the close ally of flavescens collected by Mr. Eaton in 
the Everglades,—from which region Rafinesque is not known to have seen 
material. Like most of the preceding, this name dates from 1836, so 
that it cannot be made to replace the earlier flavescens, though if it could 
be shown to pertain to Mr. Eaton's plant it would have priority (under 
Viscum) over the name now given to that Phoradendron. The only spe- 
cies of Rafinesque of whieh I have seen specimens is labeled Viscum 
serotinum,—from the Cumberland Mountains of Pennsylvania and an 
unspecified loeality in Arkansas, in the Delessert Herbarium; and from 
au unspecified locality in Kentucky, at the Academy of Science of Phila- 
delphia. 
A curious fact in the history of this species is that Pursh, who un- 
mistakably meant the Viscum album of Walter, wrote flavescens Willde- 
now [Swartz], instead of flavens Willdenow, with which West Indian 
species he ambiguously identifies the mistletoe of the southeastern United 
States which thus obtained its now long-established specific name through 
accidental copying or deliberate emendation (for it is twice spelled 
flavescens) of a preoccupied name. It may be noted, too, that Eichler 
wrote flavum instead of flavens in the key of his masterly analysis of 
the genus in tropical America. 
Though Willdenow had the present species in his herbarium (PL 25) 
as representing the Viscum purpureum of Linnaeus, there can be little 
doubt that Linnaeus himself intended this name to apply to the West 
Indian mistletoe figured on plate 95 of Catesby’s great work, which 
obviously represents a Dendropemon, to which genus the Linnean spe- 
cies is now, and properly, referred. 
> PHORADENDRON FLAVESCENS ORBICULATUM Engelmann. 
Phoradendron flavescens orbiculatum Engelmann, Boston Journ. Nat. 
Hist. vol. 6. p. 212. 1850. 
