had copied this himself, for it seems not to have been 
published elsewhere. 
It is quite apparent from a thorough study of the 
Kunth publication of Siphonia brasiliensis that, although 
he pointed out in the footnote reproduced above that the 
Brazilian material differed in several characters from the 
two Venezuelan collections, Kunth himself considered 
the three collections to represent the same concept. The 
description, it is also apparent, was based upon the Vene- 
zuelan material which, as we now know, definitely does 
not represent the common cultivated plant but rather a 
rare species which has, as yet, acquired no commercial 
importance. 
A critical examination of Kunth’s treatment discloses 
an inconspicuous point which seems to have been over- 
looked and which alters our interpretation of the prob- 
lem. In their ‘‘Nova genera et species plantarum,” 
Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth were accustomed to 
indicate names which they were publishing as their own 
for the first time with a small dagger. In the preface 
(loc. cit. 1 (1816) vi), they state: ‘‘Species et genera 
nova signo fF indicantur.’’? Siphonia brasiliensis is not 
marked with a dagger. This, coupled with their citation 
in synonymy of Willdenow’s Siphonia brasiliensis (which 
had been written on an herbarium sheet) would seem to 
indicate that Kunth was publishing an unpublished 
Willdenow name. ‘This puzzling situation is completely 
clarified if, remembering the lack of the dagger in 
Kunth’s publication, we refer to an article by Adr. de 
Jussieu. It then becomes apparent that Jussieu validly 
published Willdenow’s Stphonia brasiliensis in 1824, one 
year before the appearance of Kunth’s description. In his 
“De Euphorbiacearum generibus. ...’’ (1824) tab. 12, 
fig. 88b, 1-6, Jussieu published a plate consisting of diag- 
nostic drawings of the staminate calyx, the stamens with 
[ 83 ] 
