I. Tue Typirication or Datura meteloides DC. 
ex Dunal 
The name Datura meteloides was first proposed by 
Dunal in a manuscript which he sent to Alphonse de 
Candolle, who in turn published the epithet in his Pro- 
dromus (1852). Hence, the correct citation should be 
Datura meteloides DC. ex Dunal. Alphonse de Candolle 
based his concept of D. meteloides on both the drawing 
and the description by Sessé and Mocino as we may see 
from the following note in the Prodromus: ‘‘In calidis 
Novae Hispaniae regionibus. D. Metel Moe. et Sess. pl. 
Mexie. ined. ic. et mss. t. 919, collect. transl. Candoll.”’ 
The original Sessé and Mocino illustrations were loaned 
to August Pyramus de Candolle and were recalled on 
short notice. As a result, de Candolle, who recognized 
the value of these drawings, enlisted the help of the 
townspeople of Geneva to make copies of them before 
sending them back. One of these copies, Icones no. 919, 
has served as the type of D. meteloides and is now pre- 
served in the Candollean Herbarium (Ewan, 1944). 
In 1855, a new Datura was brought into cultivation 
by the French horticulturist M. Louis Vilmorin from 
seeds sent him by Asa Gray who had obtained them from 
a collection made by Charles Wright (no. 526) in west- 
ern Texas in 1849. This plant was cultivated and distrib- 
uted under the name of Datura meteloides (Kwan, 1944). 
M. Ortgies, an employee of the Vilmorin Co. of France, 
noticed the discrepancy between de Candolle’s descrip- 
tion of D. meteloides and the plant cultivated under the 
same name and brought it to the attention of the German 
botanist, Dr. Eduard von Regel. Asa result, a new spe- 
cies, D. Wrightii, was published by Regel (1859). 
Gray (1878) considered the southwestern perennial 
species of the United States to represent Datura mete- 
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