30 H. G. SIMMONS. [sec. arct. exp. fram 



it is rather difficult to make sure how the have used it. If Steven (I. c.) 

 is right, Fischer seems to have put it as a variety under P. Langs- 

 dorfi, but a few years after the publication of Steven's monograph, 

 appeared the work of Chamisso & Schlechtendal about the plants of 

 the Romanzoff expedition, and here the two very different species were 

 kept apart, as Chamisso had had the opportunity of studying them from 

 nature. There cannot be the least doubt about the meaning of the 

 name as used by Chamisso and Schlechtendal, and consequently it 

 must be used for the species in question. No consideration is to be 

 given to the unpublished names; and even Steven's name is put out 

 of the question owing to the confusion in his monograph a point to 

 which I shall return later. Of subsequent writers, Bunge in Ledebour's 

 Fl. Ross, follows Chamisso, and so also does Maximowicz (1. c), but 

 Hooker (1. c), on the other hand, has adopted Steven's arrangement 

 but with the difference, that for him „the more common woolly-spiked 

 state of the plant" that Steven designed as „/? calyce lanato" („syn. 

 P. lanata, Pall, in herb. Marshall et Willdenow" according to Steven, 

 1, c.) becomes the principal type, which he says that Fischer himself 

 has marked is his (Hooker's) herbarium as his P. Langsdorfi. In his 

 monograph indeed, Steven has figured his P. Langsdorfi (T. 9, fig. 

 2), but this figure is not one that can settle the question, for it calls to 

 mind both — having the flowers of P. arctica, with distinct teeth at 

 the upper part of the brim of the galea, while the basal leaves appear 

 to be those of P. lanata. The spike most nearly resembles that of the 

 latter species, but the dense hair is not indicated in the figure. Possibly 

 the figure is schematic, perhaps also the confusion may partly be due 

 to the existence of yet another form. In the Nat. Hist. Mus. herbarium 

 I saw a specimen from Kamshatka, ex. herb. Pallas, which was most 

 hke P. lanata, except for the existence of a pair of very slender teeth 

 at the apex of the galea of some flowers. It was also less woolly than 

 the typical P. lanata. It may possibly represent an undescribed 

 species, perhaps a hybrid between P. arctica and P. lanata. This was 

 the only specimen about which I was really in doubt as to how to 

 classify it, in all other cases specimens from Asia as well as from 

 America always clearly showed either the characters of P. arctica or 

 of P. lanata and, in the latter case, were never denticulate at the galea. 

 If P. arctica is removed from the Anodontae as it ought rightly to be, 

 together with P. elata, Willd., and P. striata, Pall., and these three 

 species are placed among the Bidentatae [Lophodon], we get the sharp 

 difference between these and the Anodontae, that Bunge has estab- 



